Skip to content
worldfires
en
MG · Madagascar · →

Mandritsara fire, September 2019 Mandritsara

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2019, 10:21 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2019 in Mandritsara, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,752 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Sofia since 2016 (of 164 with a page). Number 9 in Madagascar in 2019, of 38.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mandritsara · 2016Befandriana Nord · 2026

Burnt area
3,752ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
11 Sept 2019 – 21 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
11 Sept
2019
Heat detections
104
in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
113MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1 12 Sept 2019 · 22 MW · 8 13 Sept 2019 · 19 MW · 9 14 Sept 2019 · 118 MW · 22 15 Sept 2019 · 578 MW · 39 16 Sept 2019 · 114 MW · 19 20 Sept 2019 · 8 MW · 1 21 Sept 2019 · 44 MW · 5
11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 20 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,371 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Mandritsara where it started
    3,764 ha reached on 11 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 650 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)
12 Sept 31.2 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept 30.5 °C 35 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Sept 31.3 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 31.8 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Sept 31.3 °C 30 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Sept 31.6 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Sept 31.4 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept 31.4 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept 29.6 °C 37 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Sept 29.3 °C 30 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Sept after 28.2 °C 41 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 29.5 °C 34 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Sept after 30.8 °C 41 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Sept after 31.9 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Sept after 33.4 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Sept after 31.3 °C 43 % 58 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2019
After · 28 Sept 2019

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

Detections table · 104Every 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 Madagascar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mandritsara fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2019 to 21 September 2019 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2019 to 17 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,752 hectares (37.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mandritsara (3,764 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Madagascar (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.

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 17 September 2019 → 21 September 2019.
  2. Start date: 12 September 2019 → 11 September 2019.

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.

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 12 September 2019 to 17 September 2019. 104 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.