How long did the Mappi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 October 2026 and 29 October 2026: 16 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 1,871 hectares (18.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mappi (1,888 ha, 0.1 %).

Is the Mappi fire still active?

No fire detections since 29 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.

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.

ID · Indonesia · 2026-10-14 → 2026-10-29

Mappi fire, 14 October 2026 Mappi

Dying down · last detection 29 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2026 in Mappi, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,871 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 235th largest in Papua since 2016 (of 356 with a page). Number 719 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1020.

The power measured by the satellite is low (17.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mappi · 2026 Merauke · 2026 Merauke · 2026 Merauke · 2026

Is it still active?

No detections since 29 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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: 1,871ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 14 Oct 2026 – 29 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; regencies
Started on: 14 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 73; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 26MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct29 Oct

Play back 29 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct 23 Oct 27 Oct 28 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

38°high

45km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 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

Mappi where it started

1,888 ha

0.1 %

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
9 Oct	36.8 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 39
10 Oct	38.1 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Oct	37.6 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
12 Oct	37.7 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
13 Oct	37.5 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
14 Oct	36.9 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.6 mm	High 34
15 Oct	36.8 °C	32 %	28 km/h	2.0 mm	High 22
16 Oct	37.1 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 Oct	37.6 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Oct	37.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
19 Oct	37.4 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 40
20 Oct	38.4 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Oct	37.7 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 41
22 Oct	37.5 °C	32 %	35 km/h	2.0 mm	High 21
23 Oct	36.0 °C	47 %	20 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 7
24 Oct	38.1 °C	33 %	20 km/h	2.6 mm	Moderate 14
25 Oct	37.4 °C	37 %	28 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 17
26 Oct	34.8 °C	45 %	30 km/h	7.0 mm	Very low 5
27 Oct	35.1 °C	48 %	22 km/h	4.5 mm	Very low 4
28 Oct	35.3 °C	47 %	28 km/h	3.4 mm	Very low 4
29 Oct	36.6 °C	38 %	22 km/h	8.0 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Oct 2026

After · 29 Oct 2026

Before After

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 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 345 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 220: 15 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak345 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10351 µg/m³

Optical depth5.97

WHO 15

78910111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 73Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mappi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 October 2026 and 29 October 2026: 16 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 1,871 hectares (18.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mappi (1,888 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Mappi fire still active?: No fire detections since 29 Oct 2026, 04:53 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 29 October 2026.

29 October 2026 Page published (1,827 ha).

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 73 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.

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.