Anjozorobe fire, October 2019 Ambatondrazaka, Anjozorobe
The fire started on 19 October 2019 in Anjozorobe, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,014 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 22th largest in Analamanga since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 37 in Madagascar in 2019, of 38.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,014ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 19days
- 19 Oct 2019 – 6 Nov 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 104
- in a single hotspot: 128 MW
- Average daily power
- 57MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 780 ha in 2016, 1,469 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,571 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,304 ha reached on 21 Oct0.2 %
-
Anjozorobe where it started723 ha reached on 19 Oct0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.52 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).
This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.
Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
Detections table · 104Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,076 haAnjozorobeOctober 2017 · 13 days · 0 km away
- 2,626 haAnjozorobe12 October 2023 · 12 days · 12 km away
- 2,895 haAnjozorobe8 October 2023 · 15 days · 13 km away
- 2,275 haAnjozorobeOctober 2018 · 4 days · 15 km away
- 2,601 haAnjozorobeNovember 2024 · 14 days · 25 km away
- 4,338 haMoramanga12 September 2018 · 25 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Anjozorobe fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 October 2019 to 6 November 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 October 2019 to 30 October 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,014 hectares (20.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ambatondrazaka (1,304 ha, 0.2 %); Anjozorobe (723 ha, 0.2 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
Where to verify it
A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 30 October 2019 → 6 November 2019.
- Start date: 21 October 2019 → 19 October 2019.
Does something look wrong on this page?
This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 October 2019 to 30 October 2019. 104 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.