Sakaraha fire, September 2023 Sakaraha
The fire started on 27 September 2023 in Sakaraha, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,248 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 21th largest in Atsimo-Andrefana since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 5 in Madagascar in 2023, of 32.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,248ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 27days
- 27 Sept 2023 – 23 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 445
- in a single hotspot: 173 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 250MW
- 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 more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 18 Oct.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,015 ha in 2016, 1,167 ha in 2017, 3,825 ha in 2019, 4,085 ha in 2020, 5,965 ha in 2021, 2,237 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,258 ha that had burned before.
- 5,813 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2021 9,405 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,835 ha Sakaraha fire, September 2020 7,982 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,799 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2019 6,052 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 537 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2016 9,734 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 153 ha Sakaraha fire, November 2021 2,354 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 38 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2017 11,633 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
-
Sakaraha where it started5,272 ha reached on 27 Sept0.6 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4 Oct | 32.9 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Oct | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Oct | 35.4 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 7 Oct | 35.4 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 8 Oct | 33.4 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Oct | 34.8 °C | 18 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 10 Oct | 34.1 °C | 27 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 11 Oct | 35.7 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 12 Oct | 34.2 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 13 Oct | 33.7 °C | 29 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Oct | 33.3 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Oct | 30.0 °C | 45 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Oct | 30.0 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 17 Oct | 30.9 °C | 39 % | 41 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 27 |
| 18 Oct | 27.9 °C | 56 % | 39 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
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 7 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 19: 1.3 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 · 445Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,633 haSakarahaOctober 2017 · 47 days · 14 km away
- 12,274 haToliary-II10 October 2017 · 36 days · 23 km away
- 12,385 haToliary-IISeptember 2023 · 23 days · 33 km away
- 14,910 haToliary-II14 October 2021 · 34 days · 35 km away
- 13,011 haToliary-IISeptember 2018 · 22 days · 35 km away
- 14,445 haToliary-II7 October 2019 · 38 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sakaraha fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 September 2023 to 23 October 2023 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 October 2023 to 16 October 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,248 hectares (52.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sakaraha (5,272 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
- 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 4 October 2023 to 16 October 2023. 445 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.
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.