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Manja fire, September 2017 Manja

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2017, 10:33 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2017 in Manja, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,352 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Menabe since 2016 (of 98 with a page). Number 8 in Madagascar in 2017, of 57.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Manja · 2016Manja · 2016Manja · 2017Manja · 2016

Burnt area
5,352ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
31days
27 Sept 2017 – 27 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Sept
2017
Heat detections
457
in a single hotspot: 245 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
242MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept27 Oct
27 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2017 · 53 MW · 4 28 Sept 2017 · 30 MW · 3 29 Sept 2017 · 15 MW · 2 30 Sept 2017 · 4 MW · 1 1 Oct 2017 · 79 MW · 6 2 Oct 2017 · 37 MW · 6 3 Oct 2017 · 2 MW · 1 4 Oct 2017 · 11 MW · 3 5 Oct 2017 · 51 MW · 3 6 Oct 2017 · 107 MW · 11 7 Oct 2017 · 300 MW · 22 8 Oct 2017 · 1,228 MW · 49 9 Oct 2017 · 184 MW · 7 10 Oct 2017 · 854 MW · 56 11 Oct 2017 · 126 MW · 6 12 Oct 2017 · 306 MW · 26 13 Oct 2017 · 150 MW · 18 14 Oct 2017 · 539 MW · 29 15 Oct 2017 · 1,529 MW · 22 16 Oct 2017 · 345 MW · 36 17 Oct 2017 · 347 MW · 19 18 Oct 2017 · 10 MW · 3 19 Oct 2017 · 121 MW · 20 20 Oct 2017 · 138 MW · 16 21 Oct 2017 · 177 MW · 13 22 Oct 2017 · 284 MW · 17 23 Oct 2017 · 115 MW · 19 24 Oct 2017 · 197 MW · 16 25 Oct 2017 · 14 MW · 3 26 Oct 2017 · 68 MW · 13 27 Oct 2017 · 68 MW · 7
27 Sept 2 Oct 7 Oct 12 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 22 Oct 27 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
48km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

64% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,095 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,450 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Manja where it started
    5,376 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.6 %

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.

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)
4 Oct 34.3 °C 36 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm High 27
5 Oct 33.1 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.5 mm High 38
6 Oct 32.6 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Oct 33.7 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Oct 31.5 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
9 Oct 31.5 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Oct 32.1 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Oct 31.9 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
12 Oct 31.4 °C 54 % 42 km/h 0.8 mm High 24
13 Oct 31.5 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Oct 31.3 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Oct 32.3 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Oct 33.2 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Oct 33.1 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Oct 32.9 °C 50 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Oct 33.7 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Oct 34.9 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Oct 36.2 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Oct 37.3 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Oct 33.6 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Oct 33.6 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
25 Oct 32.6 °C 55 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
26 Oct 32.9 °C 51 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Oct 32.9 °C 50 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 31
28 Oct after 35.4 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Oct after 35.4 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
30 Oct after 34.4 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2017
After · 3 Nov 2017

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 · 457Every 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 Manja fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2017 to 27 October 2017 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2017 to 20 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,352 hectares (53.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Manja (5,376 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 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.

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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 4 October 2017 to 20 October 2017. 457 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.

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.