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Halmahera Timur fire, 11 September 2026 Halmahera Timur

Out · last measured on 25 Sept 2026

The fire started on 11 September 2026 in Halmahera Timur, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,654 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 20th largest in North Maluku since 2016 (of 27 with a page). Number 865 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1007.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Halmahera Timur · 2026Halmahera Utara · 2026Halmahera Utara · 2026Halmahera Tengah · 2026

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks them up automatically when they are available.

Burnt area
1,654ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
11 Sept 2026 – 25 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
11 Sept
2026
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

33°high
47km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (17 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. Halmahera Timur where it started
    1,665 ha
    0.3 %

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)
11 Sept 30.5 °C 49 % 38 km/h 1.9 mm Low 11
12 Sept 31.3 °C 47 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
13 Sept 31.6 °C 43 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Sept 31.8 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
15 Sept 31.1 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Sept 31.8 °C 43 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Sept 31.2 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Sept 32.1 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Sept 32.8 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Sept 33.2 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
21 Sept 32.8 °C 39 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Sept 33.0 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Sept 32.8 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Sept 32.3 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
25 Sept 32.0 °C 44 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept after 31.5 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Sept after 32.0 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Sept after 31.2 °C 48 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
29 Sept after 32.8 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 21
30 Sept after 33.3 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
1 Oct after 32.4 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Oct after 33.5 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Oct after 33.3 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Oct after 33.7 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Oct after 33.6 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2026
After · 2 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 16 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 107 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak107 µg/m³
Days over the guideline20 days
PM10109 µg/m³
Optical depth1.07
910111213141516171819202122232425262728
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Halmahera Timur fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 September 2026 and 25 September 2026: 15 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 1,654 hectares (16.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Halmahera Timur (1,665 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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 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.
  • 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 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.