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ID · Indonesia ·

Lampung Timur fire, September 2024 Lampung Timur

Out · last measured on 5 Sept 2024

The fire started on 5 September 2024 in Lampung Timur, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,786 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 9 in Indonesia in 2024, of 15.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ogan Komering Ilir · 2019Ogan Ilir · 2017Lampung Timur · 2023Lampung Timur · 2026

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
1,786ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
1day
5 Sept 2024 – 5 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
5 Sept
2024
Danger at start
12
Moderate · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
58%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 7 Sept.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 191 ha in 2016, 1,328 ha in 2017, 120 ha in 2018, 556 ha in 2019, 200 ha in 2020, 344 ha in 2021, 94 ha in 2022, 257 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,464 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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. Lampung Timur where it started
    1,797 ha
    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 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)
5 Sept 32.6 °C 58 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 12
6 Sept after 33.2 °C 53 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 16
7 Sept after 32.0 °C 61 % 49 km/h 1.8 mm Low 10

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 12.3, a minimum humidity of 58% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2017: 2.

FWI at the start 12.3
Minimum humidity 58 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Ogan Komering Ilir fire, September 2019
1,891 ha 24 days FWI 9.1 Min. humidity 66 % 102 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.4 mm on 3 Oct.

See its page Compare with this fire

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 2. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.8 mmfirst rain
7 Sept2 days after it ended
35km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 5 Sept, and on 7 Sept 1.8 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2017.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2024
After · 12 Sept 2024

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 3 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1054 µg/m³
Optical depth1.06
3 Sept5 Sept7 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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Lampung Timur fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2024 and 5 September 2024: 1 day 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 1,786 hectares (17.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lampung Timur (1,797 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.6 °C, humidity dropped to 58 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, 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 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 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.