How long did the Poso fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 October 2026 to 22 October 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2026 to 15 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,124 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Poso (3,145 ha, 0.4 %).

Is the Poso fire still active?

No fire detections since 22 Oct 2026, 06:12 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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 · 2026-10-02 → 2026-10-22

Poso fire, 2 October 2026 Poso

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2026, 06:12 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2026 in Poso, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,124 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Central Sulawesi since 2016 (of 26 with a page). Number 385 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1010.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Poso · 2026 Poso · 2026 Poso · 2026

Burnt area: 3,124ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 2 Oct 2026 – 22 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; regencies
Started on: 2 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 116; in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 129MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 22 Oct 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct22 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 8 Oct 11 Oct 14 Oct 19 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

32°high

38km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 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 2% of the area of London (31 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

Poso where it started

3,145 ha reached on 2 Oct

0.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
2 Oct	31.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
3 Oct	30.3 °C	24 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
4 Oct	31.0 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Oct	28.7 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
6 Oct	30.5 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
7 Oct	31.8 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Oct	28.7 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 16
9 Oct	28.9 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Sept 2026

After · 23 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 8 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 80 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak80 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1082 µg/m³

Optical depth0.93

WHO 15

3012345678

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 · 116Every 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 Poso fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 October 2026 to 22 October 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2026 to 15 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,124 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Poso (3,145 ha, 0.4 %).
Is the Poso fire still active?: No fire detections since 22 Oct 2026, 06:12 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class 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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 October 2026 to 15 October 2026. 116 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.

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.

Where it burned