Kapuas fire, 26 August 2023 Kapuas
The fire started on 26 August 2023 in Kapuas, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,721 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 273th largest in Central Kalimantan since 2016 (of 317 with a page). Number 115 in Indonesia in 2023, of 165.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kapuas · 2018Kapuas · 2026Barito Selatan · 2019
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
- 1,721ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 26 Aug 2023 – 3 Sept 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- regencies
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2023
- Danger at start
- 18
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 7 Sept.
This area had burned before
54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 123 ha in 2017, 298 ha in 2018, 544 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Jakarta boundary: geoBoundaries · Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS - Statistics Indonesia), World Food Programme, OCHA ROAP (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kapuas where it started1,733 ha0.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 34.2 °C | 49 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 27 Aug | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 28 Aug | 35.1 °C | 41 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 29 Aug | 35.9 °C | 37 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 30 Aug | 35.9 °C | 39 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Aug | 36.4 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Sept | 35.3 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Sept | 36.0 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Sept | 35.0 °C | 38 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 4 Sept after | 34.6 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 5 Sept after | 34.9 °C | 44 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 30 |
| 6 Sept after | 34.8 °C | 47 % | 30 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 22 |
| 7 Sept after | 33.8 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 12 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 4 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 349 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kapuas fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 August 2023 and 3 September 2023: 9 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 1,721 hectares (17.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kapuas (1,733 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.
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. 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.
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.