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Mitsinjo fire, 31 August 2026 Mitsinjo

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2026, 10:58 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2026 in Mitsinjo, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Boeny since 2016 (of 41 with a page). Number 13 in Madagascar in 2026, of 99.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mitsinjo · 2026Mitsinjo · 2025Soalala · 2026Mitsinjo · 2017

Burnt area
4,713ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
31 Aug 2026 – 28 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
31 Aug
2026
Heat detections
189
in a single hotspot: 82 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
103MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug28 Sept
28 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2026 · 25 MW · 4 1 Sept 2026 · 201 MW · 13 2 Sept 2026 · 375 MW · 9 3 Sept 2026 · 3 MW · 3 4 Sept 2026 · 89 MW · 10 5 Sept 2026 · 26 MW · 6 6 Sept 2026 · 9 MW · 3 8 Sept 2026 · 22 MW · 4 10 Sept 2026 · 56 MW · 5 12 Sept 2026 · 71 MW · 8 13 Sept 2026 · 24 MW · 2 14 Sept 2026 · 138 MW · 6 15 Sept 2026 · 71 MW · 9 16 Sept 2026 · 160 MW · 29 17 Sept 2026 · 458 MW · 23 18 Sept 2026 · 237 MW · 17 19 Sept 2026 · 71 MW · 3 21 Sept 2026 · 84 MW · 9 22 Sept 2026 · 92 MW · 6 24 Sept 2026 · 29 MW · 4 25 Sept 2026 · 170 MW · 7 26 Sept 2026 · 29 MW · 4 27 Sept 2026 · 18 MW · 3 28 Sept 2026 · 16 MW · 2
31 Aug 4 Sept 10 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 25 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

34°high
51km/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

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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. Mitsinjo where it started
    4,743 ha reached on 31 Aug
    1.0 %

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 area0.38 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Aug 31.6 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Sept 31.6 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Sept 31.4 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Sept 31.5 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Sept 31.9 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Sept 32.3 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Sept 31.4 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept 30.2 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Sept 32.8 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.8 mm High 31
9 Sept 32.1 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Sept 33.2 °C 31 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 31.6 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept 30.6 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Sept 31.6 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Sept 33.3 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Sept 33.4 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept 32.9 °C 28 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 31.9 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 32.0 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Sept 32.3 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Sept 32.7 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Sept 32.0 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Sept 31.2 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Sept 31.0 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Sept 31.1 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
25 Sept 32.3 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Sept 33.5 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept 33.9 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept 33.5 °C 36 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Sept after 34.3 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept after 32.8 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Oct after 33.1 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm High 36
2 Oct after 34.8 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct after 33.6 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Oct after 33.4 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct after 33.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Oct after 33.7 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Oct after 33.5 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Oct after 33.1 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2026
After · 5 Oct 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 18 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 77 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 32: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak77 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1079 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
2930311234567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829301
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 · 189Every 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 Mitsinjo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2026 to 28 September 2026 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2026 to 21 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,713 hectares (47.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mitsinjo (4,743 ha, 1.0 %).
Is the Mitsinjo fire still active?
No fire detections since 28 Sept 2026, 10:58 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 31 August 2026 to 21 September 2026. 189 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.