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ID · Indonesia · –

Barito Selatan fire, 18 August 2026 Barito Selatan

Out · last detection 7 Oct 2026, 18:34 UTC

The fire started on 18 August 2026 in Barito Selatan, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 50 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

Number 99 in Indonesia in 2026, of 981.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
7,713ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
50days
18 Aug 2026 – 6 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
18 Aug
2026
Heat detections
542
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
86MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Aug6 Oct
7 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Aug 2026 · 99 MW · 19 19 Aug 2026 · 10 MW · 8 21 Aug 2026 · 8 MW · 1 23 Aug 2026 · 5 MW · 2 24 Aug 2026 · 17 MW · 9 25 Aug 2026 · 12 MW · 6 26 Aug 2026 · 25 MW · 6 27 Aug 2026 · 3 MW · 2 28 Aug 2026 · 188 MW · 25 29 Aug 2026 · 24 MW · 9 30 Aug 2026 · 5 MW · 3 31 Aug 2026 · 20 MW · 4 1 Sept 2026 · 97 MW · 18 2 Sept 2026 · 24 MW · 2 3 Sept 2026 · 26 MW · 12 5 Sept 2026 · 9 MW · 7 6 Sept 2026 · 11 MW · 2 8 Sept 2026 · 13 MW · 5 11 Sept 2026 · 198 MW · 31 12 Sept 2026 · 132 MW · 19 13 Sept 2026 · 188 MW · 23 14 Sept 2026 · 345 MW · 57 15 Sept 2026 · 163 MW · 47 18 Sept 2026 · 114 MW · 19 19 Sept 2026 · 34 MW · 14 20 Sept 2026 · 15 MW · 13 21 Sept 2026 · 27 MW · 10 22 Sept 2026 · 50 MW · 10 24 Sept 2026 · 1,159 MW · 91 25 Sept 2026 · 130 MW · 30 26 Sept 2026 · 32 MW · 16 27 Sept 2026 · 18 MW · 2 28 Sept 2026 · 19 MW · 8 29 Sept 2026 · 29 MW · 3 2 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 5 Oct 2026 · 5 MW · 1 6 Oct 2026 · 3 MW · 3 7 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 4
18 Aug 28 Aug 6 Sept 24 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
30km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 10 Oct.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 254 ha in 2024.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (77 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Barito Selatan where it started
    8,047 ha reached on 18 Aug
    1.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.21 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.21 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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

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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
18 Aug 36.0 °C 37 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
19 Aug 35.2 °C 35 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Aug 34.8 °C 42 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
21 Aug 35.0 °C 42 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Aug 34.9 °C 45 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Aug 33.9 °C 54 % 20 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
24 Aug 34.9 °C 50 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Aug 35.6 °C 44 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Aug 35.4 °C 36 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Aug 35.5 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug 35.9 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Aug 35.9 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Aug 35.0 °C 40 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug 35.6 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Sept 36.0 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 35.5 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Sept 35.1 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Sept 34.8 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
5 Sept 34.8 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
6 Sept 35.4 °C 41 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept 33.2 °C 56 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
8 Sept 33.7 °C 56 % 17 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
9 Sept 35.0 °C 48 % 26 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 16
10 Sept 35.8 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Sept 36.6 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Sept 35.8 °C 40 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Sept 36.0 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Sept 36.1 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 36.2 °C 35 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Sept 31.9 °C 49 % 22 km/h 0.7 mm High 27
17 Sept 31.5 °C 51 % 30 km/h 1.9 mm Low 8
18 Sept 35.9 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Sept 37.6 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Sept 36.5 °C 40 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Sept 36.8 °C 38 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Sept 36.9 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Sept 36.9 °C 37 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Sept 36.6 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
25 Sept 35.2 °C 51 % 20 km/h 2.1 mm Low 10
26 Sept 35.9 °C 48 % 15 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
27 Sept 34.7 °C 49 % 21 km/h 5.9 mm High 22
28 Sept 34.7 °C 51 % 23 km/h 4.3 mm Very low 4
29 Sept 35.4 °C 49 % 19 km/h 0.6 mm Low 6
30 Sept 35.9 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 15
1 Oct 35.2 °C 44 % 23 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 3
2 Oct 36.4 °C 40 % 16 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
3 Oct 35.3 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
4 Oct 37.0 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
5 Oct 36.8 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Oct 36.2 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Oct after 36.5 °C 34 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Oct after 35.9 °C 39 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Oct after 35.5 °C 42 % 21 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
10 Oct after 33.8 °C 53 % 16 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 11 Aug 2026
After · 13 Oct 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 17 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 2,436 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 1,117: 74 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak2,436 µg/m³
Days over the guideline41 days
PM102,474 µg/m³
Optical depth10.56
23 Aug1 Sept10 Sept19 Sept28 Sept
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 542Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Barito Selatan fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 August 2026 to 6 October 2026 (50 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2026 to 29 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,713 hectares (77.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barito Selatan (8,047 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Indonesia (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 · Emergency number and official warnings

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.
  1. Area: 7,995 → 7,713 ha.
  2. Last day with fire: 29 September 2026 → 6 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 August 2026 to 29 September 2026. 542 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology

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.