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Bulungan fire, August 2019 Bulungan, Berau

Out · last measured on 2 Oct 2019

The fire started on 28 August 2019 in Bulungan, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 36 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,956 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 16 in Indonesia in 2019, of 417.

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We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
14,956ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
36days
28 Aug 2019 – 2 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
2
regencies
Started on
28 Aug
2019
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

34°high
41km/h · peak gust
45%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 3 Oct.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 670 ha in 2016, 222 ha in 2017, 774 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.4% of the area of London (150 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. Bulungan where it started
    12,002 ha
    0.9 %
  2. Berau
    3,052 ha
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.3 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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

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)
28 Aug 31.0 °C 63 % 34 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 0
29 Aug 32.7 °C 53 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 2
30 Aug 30.9 °C 63 % 21 km/h 1.3 mm Very low 1
31 Aug 30.9 °C 64 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 3
1 Sept 31.9 °C 63 % 22 km/h 1.3 mm Very low 2
2 Sept 33.0 °C 58 % 28 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 1
3 Sept 31.5 °C 65 % 21 km/h 4.5 mm Very low 0
4 Sept 32.1 °C 67 % 27 km/h 1.8 mm Very low 1
5 Sept 31.2 °C 68 % 24 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 0
6 Sept 31.5 °C 65 % 27 km/h 10.0 mm Very low 0
7 Sept 32.5 °C 63 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 1
8 Sept 32.1 °C 62 % 24 km/h 7.9 mm Very low 0
9 Sept 33.1 °C 57 % 23 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 2
10 Sept 32.5 °C 59 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
11 Sept 32.7 °C 54 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
12 Sept 33.5 °C 52 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
13 Sept 33.3 °C 50 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
14 Sept 33.8 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
15 Sept 32.1 °C 57 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
16 Sept 31.9 °C 60 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Sept 32.4 °C 58 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
18 Sept 32.0 °C 60 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
19 Sept 31.9 °C 58 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm Low 11
20 Sept 31.8 °C 63 % 25 km/h 1.3 mm Low 6
21 Sept 31.9 °C 61 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm Low 6
22 Sept 31.7 °C 62 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Low 8
23 Sept 32.1 °C 59 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
24 Sept 31.9 °C 62 % 29 km/h 0.5 mm Low 11
25 Sept 31.6 °C 66 % 26 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6
26 Sept 31.7 °C 62 % 27 km/h 1.3 mm Low 6
27 Sept 32.4 °C 59 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
28 Sept 32.5 °C 56 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
29 Sept 32.0 °C 62 % 26 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 3
30 Sept 31.7 °C 61 % 24 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 2
1 Oct 31.2 °C 64 % 28 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 0
2 Oct 30.8 °C 64 % 28 km/h 17.6 mm Very low 0
3 Oct after 29.9 °C 69 % 21 km/h 7.0 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2019
After · 9 Oct 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bulungan fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2019 and 2 October 2019: 36 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 14,956 hectares (149.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bulungan (12,002 ha, 0.9 %); Berau (3,052 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2020, 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.