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ID · Indonesia · –

Batang Hari fire, 20 August 2026 Musi Banyuasin, Batang Hari

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2026, 07:07 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2026 in Batang Hari, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,636 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

We are reviewing this page: some of its data look inconsistent (the place, the dates or the area), so treat them with caution.

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
9,636ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
20 Aug 2026 – 19 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
2
regencies
Started on
20 Aug
2026
Heat detections
441
in a single hotspot: 257 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
166MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug19 Sept
19 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 2026 · 37 MW · 5 22 Aug 2026 · 554 MW · 51 23 Aug 2026 · 214 MW · 23 24 Aug 2026 · 287 MW · 32 25 Aug 2026 · 12 MW · 3 26 Aug 2026 · 1 MW · 1 27 Aug 2026 · 62 MW · 13 28 Aug 2026 · 6 MW · 6 29 Aug 2026 · 49 MW · 3 30 Aug 2026 · 7 MW · 1 1 Sept 2026 · 19 MW · 7 2 Sept 2026 · 28 MW · 9 3 Sept 2026 · 336 MW · 27 4 Sept 2026 · 751 MW · 83 5 Sept 2026 · 1,367 MW · 40 6 Sept 2026 · 266 MW · 39 7 Sept 2026 · 49 MW · 11 8 Sept 2026 · 28 MW · 5 9 Sept 2026 · 34 MW · 8 11 Sept 2026 · 10 MW · 1 13 Sept 2026 · 12 MW · 9 14 Sept 2026 · 19 MW · 5 15 Sept 2026 · 165 MW · 22 16 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 1 17 Sept 2026 · 80 MW · 25 18 Sept 2026 · 54 MW · 6 19 Sept 2026 · 36 MW · 5
21 Aug 27 Aug 5 Sept 17 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

37°high
37km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 21 ha in 2018, 3,812 ha in 2019, 5,563 ha in 2023, 1,438 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,120 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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. 7,884 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.5 %
  2. Batang Hari where it started
    3,808 ha reached on 21 Aug
    0.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
20 Aug 36.0 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
21 Aug 36.8 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Aug 37.3 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Aug 37.2 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
24 Aug 36.6 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Aug 36.3 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Aug 35.9 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Aug 36.6 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Aug 36.5 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Aug 35.3 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm High 31
30 Aug 34.9 °C 46 % 30 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20
31 Aug 35.2 °C 46 % 31 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 18
1 Sept 36.9 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
2 Sept 37.3 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Sept 36.9 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Sept 37.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Sept 36.3 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 35.8 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 35.6 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 36.2 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
9 Sept 35.6 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
10 Sept 35.9 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
11 Sept 35.3 °C 43 % 33 km/h 7.1 mm High 31
12 Sept 36.1 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
13 Sept 35.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept 36.1 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept 36.3 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Sept 35.6 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Sept 35.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 34.0 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Sept 35.7 °C 42 % 29 km/h 6.3 mm High 31
20 Sept after 35.8 °C 40 % 34 km/h 1.6 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2026
After · 26 Sept 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 189 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 94: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak189 µg/m³
Days over the guideline36 days
PM10196 µg/m³
Optical depth3.87
18 Aug26 Aug3 Sept11 Sept19 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 · 441Every 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 Batang Hari fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2026 and 19 September 2026: 31 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,636 hectares (96.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Musi Banyuasin (7,884 ha, 0.5 %); Batang Hari (3,808 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 11,614 → 9,636 ha.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 441 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.