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Maripasoula fire, 29 October 2026 Maripasoula, Papaichton

Burning · last detection 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC

Satellites first detected fire on 29 October 2026 in Maripasoula, France. It has been active for 8 days, with 21 heat detections and an area with fire of about 252 hectares rebuilt from them, spread across 2 municipalities.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maripasoula · 2026

Copernicus has not yet published the burnt perimeter, which takes a few days to measure on satellite imagery. For now the area is the one rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per pixel). When the perimeter arrives, this page picks it up on its own and keeps the same address.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. 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.

Area with fire
≈ 252ha
rebuilt from hotspots, no official perimeter yet
Duration
8days
29 Oct 2026 – 5 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
29 Oct
2026
Heat detections
21
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
26MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Oct5 Nov
5 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 30 Oct 2026 · 2 MW · 1 31 Oct 2026 · 27 MW · 4 1 Nov 2026 · 15 MW · 4 2 Nov 2026 · 53 MW · 6 3 Nov 2026 · 8 MW · 4 4 Nov 2026 · 67 MW · 4 5 Nov 2026 · 13 MW · 6
29 Oct 31 Oct 2 Nov 4 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
46km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

What happened to each town

  1. Maripasoula 9,579 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre where it started
    126 ha reached on 29 Oct
    0.0 %
  2. Papaichton 5,006 inhabitants · 1.8 km from the centre
    56 ha reached on 30 Oct
    0.0 %

Area with fire inside each municipality, rebuilt from heat detections (about 14 hectares per VIIRS pixel). An estimate until the official perimeter arrives. 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)
29 Oct 35.1 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
30 Oct 34.9 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Oct 35.4 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Nov 35.8 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
2 Nov 35.8 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
3 Nov 34.2 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 38
4 Nov 34.2 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Nov 34.7 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Oct 2026
After · 4 Nov 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 8 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1017 µg/m³
Optical depth0.27
29 Sept2 Oct5 Oct8 Oct
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 · 21Every 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 France

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Maripasoula fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite, it burned from 29 October 2026 to 5 November 2026 (8 days between the first and the last detection). There is no perimeter yet to date it.
How much area did it burn?
There is no official perimeter yet. Heat detections rebuild about 252 hectares with fire (2.5 km²); Copernicus will publish the measured figure within days.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Maripasoula (126 ha, 0.0 %); Papaichton (56 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Maripasoula fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 5 Nov 2026, 17:02 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Maripasoula and came within 1.0 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of France (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 · 18 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 15 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: ≈ 154 → ≈ 210 ha.
  2. Start date: 23 October 2026 → 29 October 2026.
  3. Name: Papaichton → Maripasoula.
  4. Area: ≈ 168 → ≈ 154 ha.
  5. Area: ≈ 182 → ≈ 168 ha.
  6. Start date: 22 October 2026 → 23 October 2026.
  7. Area: ≈ 308 → ≈ 182 ha.
  8. Start date: 21 October 2026 → 22 October 2026.
  9. Area: ≈ 392 → ≈ 308 ha.
  10. Start date: 20 October 2026 → 21 October 2026.
  11. Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 27 October 2026.
  12. Start date: 19 October 2026 → 20 October 2026.
  13. Area: ≈ 378 → ≈ 392 ha.
  14. Area: ≈ 350 → ≈ 378 ha.
  15. Area: ≈ 196 → ≈ 350 ha.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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
What do you think is wrong?

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 · 18.

How we know this
  • No perimeter yet: the area (≈ 252 ha) is estimated by counting VIIRS pixels with fire, about 14 ha each.
  • Dates of the first and last VIIRS detection of the cluster. 21 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

How we build fire pages: methodology

Where this data comes from

The perimeter and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 ADM5 (Open Data Commons Attribution License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.