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SR · Suriname · –

Boven Saramacca fire, October 2026 Boven Saramacca

Burning · last detection 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2026 in Boven Saramacca, Suriname, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,101 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 17 in Suriname in 2026, of 18.

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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
1,101ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
12 Oct 2026 – 5 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
12 Oct
2026
Heat detections
36
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
19MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct5 Nov
5 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

12 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 14 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 15 Oct 2026 · 22 MW · 1 16 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 19 Oct 2026 · 3 MW · 2 20 Oct 2026 · 72 MW · 6 21 Oct 2026 · 75 MW · 10 22 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 23 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 25 Oct 2026 · 4 MW · 1 26 Oct 2026 · 12 MW · 2 27 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 28 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 29 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 30 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 31 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 1 Nov 2026 · 21 MW · 5 2 Nov 2026 · 4 MW · 1 5 Nov 2026 · 9 MW · 5
12 Oct 21 Oct 28 Oct 1 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
37km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 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 0.7% of the area of London (11 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. Boven Saramacca where it started
    1,109 ha reached on 12 Oct
    0.2 %

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 area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Oct 35.0 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
13 Oct 34.5 °C 42 % 26 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 15
14 Oct 34.7 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Oct 34.9 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Oct 34.9 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
17 Oct 35.2 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
18 Oct 34.7 °C 46 % 26 km/h 2.7 mm Low 11
19 Oct 35.0 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
20 Oct 35.1 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Oct 34.6 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Oct 34.5 °C 45 % 31 km/h 3.2 mm High 22
23 Oct 34.3 °C 41 % 31 km/h 1.2 mm Low 6
24 Oct 35.3 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 16
25 Oct 35.1 °C 45 % 29 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20
26 Oct 35.4 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Oct 35.4 °C 41 % 22 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 20
28 Oct 34.8 °C 48 % 19 km/h 0.5 mm Low 11
29 Oct 35.4 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
30 Oct 34.6 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
31 Oct 35.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Nov 35.5 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
2 Nov 34.8 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Nov 35.0 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
4 Nov 35.4 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Nov 35.5 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Oct 2026
After · 5 Nov 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 8 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1022 µg/m³
Optical depth0.33
7 Oct10 Oct13 Oct16 Oct
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 · 36Every 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 Suriname

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Boven Saramacca fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 October 2026 to 5 November 2026 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,101 hectares (11.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Boven Saramacca (1,109 ha, 0.2 %).
Is the Boven Saramacca fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Suriname (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: 110 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 1,020 → 1,087 ha.
  2. Mapped perimeter arrives: from ≈ 1,078 ha estimated from hotspots to 1,020 ha.
  3. Start date: 9 October 2026 → 12 October 2026.
  4. Name: BrownSweg → Boven Saramacca.
  5. The page “Boven Saramacca, 12 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.

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 110.

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 19 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 36 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.

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 (Public Domain). 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.