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Kapuas fire, 19 August 2026 Kapuas

Out · last measured on 6 Sept 2026

The fire started on 19 August 2026 in Kapuas, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 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 283th largest in Central Kalimantan since 2016 (of 316 with a page). Number 878 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1028.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kapuas · 2019Kapuas · 2026Kapuas · 2026Kapuas · 2019

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
19days
19 Aug 2026 – 6 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
19 Aug
2026
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
35km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 8 Sept.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 709 ha in 2019.

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. Kapuas where it started
    1,665 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 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)
19 Aug 35.8 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Aug 35.0 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Aug 35.2 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Aug 35.2 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
23 Aug 34.0 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Aug 33.8 °C 52 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
25 Aug 34.8 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Aug 35.4 °C 38 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
27 Aug 34.7 °C 42 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Aug 35.7 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Aug 35.8 °C 29 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Aug 35.4 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Aug 35.0 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Sept 34.8 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Sept 35.2 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 34.2 °C 45 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
4 Sept 34.0 °C 50 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Sept 33.6 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Sept 34.8 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Sept after 33.5 °C 55 % 20 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 18
8 Sept after 32.2 °C 59 % 19 km/h 1.8 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Aug 2026
After · 13 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 30 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 2,943 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 979: 65 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak2,943 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM102,980 µg/m³
Optical depth8.53
171819202122232425262728293031123456789
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 Kapuas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 August 2026 and 6 September 2026: 19 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 Kapuas (1,665 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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.