Apatou fire, October 2026 Apatou, Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni
Satellites first detected fire on 19 October 2026 in Apatou, France. It was active for 4 days, with 38 heat detections and an area with fire of about 392 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.
Compare with…
Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.
- Area with fire
- ≈ 392ha
- rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
- Duration
- 4days
- 19 Oct 2026 – 22 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- communes
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 38
- in a single hotspot: 84 MW
- Danger at start
- 4
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 169MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.6 mm on 23 Oct.
What happened to each town
-
Apatou where it started378 ha reached on 19 Oct0.2 %
-
Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni 54,429 inhabitants · 36.2 km from the centre14 ha reached on 20 Oct0.0 %
Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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.
The weather day by day
ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct | 34.9 °C | 45 % | 37 km/h | 4.3 mm | Very low 4 |
| 19 Oct | 35.1 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 20 Oct | 36.0 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 21 Oct | 35.1 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.5 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 22 Oct | 34.2 °C | 48 % | 34 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 23 Oct after | 33.9 °C | 58 % | 31 km/h | 25.6 mm | Very low 1 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 8 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 38Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,097 haTapanahonySeptember 2026 · 26 days · 1 km away
- 1,200 haTapanahonyNovember 2025 · 21 days · 1 km away
- 1,835 haPatamaccaSeptember 2025 · 10 days · 2 km away
- 1,056 haTapanahony12 October 2025 · 7 days · 2 km away
- 1,028 haTapanahony16 October 2025 · 12 days · 2 km away
- 1,178 haPatamaccaSeptember 2024 · 3 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Apatou fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 19 October 2026 to 22 October 2026 (4 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
- How much area did it burn?
- There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 392 hectares with fire (3.9 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Apatou (378 ha, 0.2 %); Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni (14 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Apatou fire still active?
- No fire detections since 22 Oct 2026, 17:20 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 36.2 km of the centre of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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.
Emergency number: 112 · 18 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 7 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 17 October 2026 → 18 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 616 → ≈ 406 ha.
- Start date: 16 October 2026 → 17 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 910 → ≈ 616 ha.
- Start date: 15 October 2026 → 16 October 2026.
- Area: ≈ 966 → ≈ 910 ha.
- Start date: 14 October 2026 → 15 October 2026.
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
- No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 392 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
- Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 38 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
Where this data comes from
The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.