Kapuas fire, 21 October 2026 Barito Selatan, Kapuas
The fire started on 21 October 2026 in Kapuas, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,980 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 106th largest in Central Kalimantan since 2016 (of 315 with a page). Number 297 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1020.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,980ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 21 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- regencies
- Started on
- 21 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 213
- in a single hotspot: 60 MW
- Danger at start
- 10
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 675MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.6 mm on 26 Oct.
This area had burned before
94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 504 ha in 2016, 3,772 ha in 2018, 2,081 ha in 2019, 4,109 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,743 ha that had burned before.
- 3,010 ha Barito Selatan fire, September 2023 5,709 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,101 ha Barito Selatan fire, September 2018 3,260 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,654 ha Barito Selatan fire, August 2019 28,138 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
2,966 ha reached on 22 Oct0.4 %
-
Kapuas where it started1,043 ha reached on 21 Oct0.1 %
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 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 21 Oct | 35.5 °C | 41 % | 28 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 22 Oct | 36.1 °C | 37 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 23 Oct | 34.7 °C | 43 % | 27 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 24 Oct | 35.0 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 25 Oct | 34.8 °C | 52 % | 19 km/h | 5.4 mm | Very low 2 |
| 26 Oct after | 33.8 °C | 55 % | 35 km/h | 15.6 mm | Very low 1 |
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 19 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 2,220 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 883: 59 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)
Detections table · 213Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 28,138 haBarito SelatanAugust 2019 · 27 days · 10 km away
- 60,747 haKapuas 23 August 2026 · 68 days · 25 km away
- 40,324 haKapuas 8 August 2026 · 83 days · 28 km away
- 21,739 haKapuas28 August 2019 · 33 days · 28 km away
- 49,970 haKapuasJuly 2026 · 65 days · 30 km away
- 12,937 haPulang Pisau30 August 2019 · 48 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kapuas fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 October 2026 and 25 October 2026: 5 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 3,980 hectares (39.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barito Selatan (2,966 ha, 0.4 %); Kapuas (1,043 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Kapuas fire still active?
- No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 17:58 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 23 October 2026 → 25 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. 213 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.