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Kupang fire, 25 August 2020 Kupang

Out · last measured on 30 Aug 2020

The fire started on 25 August 2020 in Kupang, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,434 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in East Nusa Tenggara since 2016 (of 42 with a page). Number 2 in Indonesia in 2020, of 16.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kupang · 2023Kupang · 2024Kupang · 2026Kupang · 2023

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
4,434ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
25 Aug 2020 – 30 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
25 Aug
2020
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

34°high
72km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 150 ha in 2019.

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. Kupang where it started
    4,464 ha
    0.9 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.8 ha
Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.8 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
25 Aug 33.3 °C 30 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug 32.5 °C 34 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Aug 33.9 °C 31 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Aug 33.8 °C 26 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Aug 33.2 °C 28 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Aug 33.2 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
31 Aug after 34.5 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept after 32.4 °C 45 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Sept after 34.1 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept after 34.6 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Sept after 34.3 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Sept after 33.9 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept after 34.3 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept after 34.2 °C 36 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept after 33.7 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept after 33.7 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2020
After · 6 Sept 2020

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kupang fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 August 2020 and 30 August 2020: 6 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 4,434 hectares (44.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kupang (4,464 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
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 2020, 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.