Moramanga fire, 19 October 2026 Moramanga
The fire started on 19 October 2026 in Moramanga, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,599 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 37th largest in Alaotra-Mangoro since 2016 (of 65 with a page). Number 64 in Madagascar in 2026, of 110.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 2,599ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 19 Oct 2026 – 24 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 19 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 18
- in a single hotspot: 79 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 175MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.4 mm on 25 Oct.
This area had burned before
90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 626 ha in 2016, 747 ha in 2017, 907 ha in 2018, 1,633 ha in 2019, 1,344 ha in 2020, 212 ha in 2021, 977 ha in 2022, 442 ha in 2023, 462 ha in 2024, 1,644 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,342 ha that had burned before.
- 841 ha Moramanga fire, September 2018 3,131 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 562 ha Moramanga fire, October 2017 2,870 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 462 ha Moramanga fire, October 2024 3,095 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 426 ha Moramanga fire, October 2019 7,805 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 338 ha Moramanga fire, October 2016 2,526 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 153 ha Moramanga fire, October 2017 2,294 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 29 ha Moramanga fire, October 2016 2,180 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 started2,618 ha reached on 19 Oct0.4 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.64 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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 | 24.1 °C | 47 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 20 Oct | 27.1 °C | 46 % | 37 km/h | 0.6 mm | Low 6 |
| 21 Oct | 29.2 °C | 44 % | 34 km/h | 2.3 mm | Very low 3 |
| 22 Oct | 29.6 °C | 54 % | 32 km/h | 2.1 mm | Very low 2 |
| 23 Oct | 29.7 °C | 46 % | 36 km/h | 0.8 mm | Low 6 |
| 24 Oct | 26.5 °C | 65 % | 41 km/h | 5.5 mm | Very low 1 |
| 25 Oct after | 21.4 °C | 75 % | 36 km/h | 6.4 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 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 162 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 102: 6.8 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 · 18Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,805 haMoramanga21 October 2019 · 18 days · 3 km away
- 10,052 haMoramangaOctober 2023 · 10 days · 17 km away
- 8,915 haMoramanga4 October 2022 · 21 days · 17 km away
- 6,941 haAnosibe-An'ala6 October 2016 · 22 days · 20 km away
- 14,208 haMoramanga19 October 2026 · 10 days · 21 km away
- 6,918 haAnosibe-An'alaSeptember 2018 · 26 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Moramanga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 October 2026 to 24 October 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2026 to 23 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,599 hectares (26.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Moramanga (2,618 ha, 0.4 %).
- Is the Moramanga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 10:34 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.7 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 October 2026 to 23 October 2026. 18 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.