Moramanga fire, 19 October 2026 Moramanga, Anosibe-An'ala
The fire started on 19 October 2026 in Moramanga, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,208 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the largest fire in Alaotra-Mangoro since 2016 (of 64 with a page). Number 3 in Madagascar in 2026, of 106.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 14,208ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 19 Oct 2026 – 28 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 243
- in a single hotspot: 173 MW
- Danger at start
- 0
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 592MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.7 mm on 29 Oct.
This area had burned before
51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 806 ha in 2016, 2,613 ha in 2017, 2,520 ha in 2018, 3,210 ha in 2019, 1,994 ha in 2020, 2,205 ha in 2021, 3,765 ha in 2022, 4,791 ha in 2023, 4,951 ha in 2024, 4,317 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,241 ha that had burned before.
- 4,073 ha Moramanga fire, October 2024 8,659 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,057 ha Moramanga fire, October 2025 6,310 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,088 ha Anosibe-An'ala fire, October 2017 9,732 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,784 ha Anosibe-An'ala fire, November 2021 6,146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,591 ha Anosibe-An'ala fire, October 2019 6,437 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,546 ha Anosibe-An'ala fire, October 2020 4,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,361 ha Anosibe-An'ala fire, September 2018 6,918 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,224 ha Moramanga fire, October 2025 2,448 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Moramanga where it started7,755 ha reached on 19 Oct1.1 %
-
6,539 ha reached on 20 Oct2.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Oct | 22.8 °C | 54 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 20 Oct | 25.3 °C | 60 % | 32 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very low 1 |
| 21 Oct | 26.5 °C | 66 % | 28 km/h | 2.9 mm | Very low 0 |
| 22 Oct | 27.4 °C | 68 % | 31 km/h | 3.4 mm | Very low 0 |
| 23 Oct | 28.2 °C | 62 % | 31 km/h | 1.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 24 Oct | 23.9 °C | 81 % | 35 km/h | 8.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 25 Oct | 19.7 °C | 91 % | 33 km/h | 17.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 26 Oct | 22.7 °C | 77 % | 38 km/h | 5.1 mm | Very low 0 |
| 27 Oct | 25.9 °C | 55 % | 32 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very low 0 |
| 28 Oct | 29.5 °C | 45 % | 34 km/h | 9.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 29 Oct after | 28.5 °C | 47 % | 34 km/h | 15.7 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 21 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 63 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 41: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 243Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,659 haMoramanga24 October 2024 · 21 days · 2 km away
- 6,941 haAnosibe-An'ala6 October 2016 · 22 days · 4 km away
- 6,918 haAnosibe-An'alaSeptember 2018 · 26 days · 4 km away
- 6,437 haAnosibe-An'ala21 October 2019 · 11 days · 5 km away
- 8,915 haMoramanga4 October 2022 · 21 days · 6 km away
- 10,052 haMoramangaOctober 2023 · 10 days · 7 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Moramanga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 October 2026 and 28 October 2026: 10 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 14,208 hectares (142.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Moramanga (7,755 ha, 1.1 %); Anosibe-An'ala (6,539 ha, 2.3 %).
- Is the Moramanga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 28 Oct 2026, 10:58 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.5 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very low.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Area: 12,643 → 13,995 ha.
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
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. 243 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.
- 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.
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.