Belaga fire, September 2019 Belaga
The fire started on 16 September 2019 in Belaga, Malaysia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 538 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 76th largest in Sarawak since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 60 in Malaysia in 2019, of 75.
The power measured by the satellite is low (13.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 538ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 16 Sept 2019 – 16 Sept 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Sept
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 13 MW
- Danger at start
- 4
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 13MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
16 Sept 2019 · 13 MW · 1
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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 18 Sept.
This area had burned before
43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 231 ha in 2018.
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
-
Belaga where it started542 ha0.0 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Sept | 31.7 °C | 59 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 17 Sept after | 32.8 °C | 55 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 18 Sept after | 33.0 °C | 60 % | 29 km/h | 1.6 mm | Very low 2 |
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 · 1Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Belaga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2019 and 16 September 2019: 1 day 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 538 hectares (5.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Belaga (542 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 59 % and gusts hit 20 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 4, class Very low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malaysia (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: 999
Satellite cross-check
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. One Suomi-NPP VIIRS detection 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.
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 License). 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.