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ID · Indonesia · –

Kapuas fire, 14 September 2026 Kapuas, Barito Kuala

Out · last detection 7 Oct 2026, 05:53 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2026 in Kapuas, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 209 in Indonesia in 2026, of 967.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
4,364ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
14 Sept 2026 – 7 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit
2
regencies
Started on
14 Sept
2026
Heat detections
116
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
156MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept7 Oct
7 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 1 15 Sept 2026 · 5 MW · 2 18 Sept 2026 · 77 MW · 3 19 Sept 2026 · 4 MW · 2 20 Sept 2026 · 992 MW · 45 21 Sept 2026 · 238 MW · 24 22 Sept 2026 · 475 MW · 22 23 Sept 2026 · 9 MW · 3 24 Sept 2026 · 54 MW · 7 25 Sept 2026 · 11 MW · 5 27 Sept 2026 · 4 MW · 1 29 Sept 2026 · 1 MW · 1 4 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 5 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 7 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0
14 Sept 20 Sept 25 Sept 4 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
40km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 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 2.8% of the area of London (44 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
    3,103 ha reached on 14 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Barito Kuala
    1,292 ha reached on 19 Sept
    0.5 %

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 area0.86 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.86 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
1 Sept 35.0 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Sept 35.4 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Sept 35.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Sept 35.2 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 34.9 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Sept 35.6 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 34.3 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept 35.0 °C 45 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
9 Sept 35.2 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Sept 35.5 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Sept 36.6 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Sept 36.2 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 37.0 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Sept 36.6 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Sept 36.5 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Sept 34.6 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Sept 33.5 °C 43 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
18 Sept 36.1 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Sept 37.5 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept 37.5 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Sept 37.4 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Sept 37.7 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Sept 37.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 35.7 °C 47 % 25 km/h 7.1 mm Low 7
25 Sept 32.8 °C 63 % 17 km/h 8.5 mm Very low 1
26 Sept 36.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Sept 36.1 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 21
28 Sept 35.8 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
29 Sept 36.4 °C 38 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
30 Sept 36.0 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.5 mm High 27
1 Oct 37.2 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Oct 37.5 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Oct 36.8 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Oct 36.8 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Oct 37.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2026
After · 14 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 17 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 1,319 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 511: 34 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,319 µg/m³
Days over the guideline20 days
PM101,334 µg/m³
Optical depth8.91
13 Sept17 Sept21 Sept25 Sept29 Sept
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)

Detections table · 116Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kapuas fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 September 2026 to 7 October 2026 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 September 2026 to 30 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,364 hectares (43.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kapuas (3,103 ha, 0.2 %); Barito Kuala (1,292 ha, 0.5 %).
Is the Kapuas fire still active?
No fire detections since 7 Oct 2026, 05:53 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very 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 With cross-checks and a citable version

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 September 2026 to 30 September 2026. 116 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.