Sakaraha fire, August 2026 Sakaraha
The fire started on 26 August 2026 in Sakaraha, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,283 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 20th largest in Atsimo-Andrefana since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 10 in Madagascar in 2026, of 99.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,283ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 26 Aug 2026 – 3 Sept 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 26 Aug
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 152
- in a single hotspot: 46 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 141MW
- 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 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,882 ha in 2016, 2,400 ha in 2017, 3,553 ha in 2019, 5,021 ha in 2020, 5,585 ha in 2021, 1,443 ha in 2022, 2,963 ha in 2023, 2,637 ha in 2024, 689 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,217 ha that had burned before.
- 4,620 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2021 9,405 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,698 ha Sakaraha fire, September 2020 7,982 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,963 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2023 5,248 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,567 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2019 6,052 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,721 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2016 9,734 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,408 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2024 3,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 965 ha Sakaraha fire, November 2021 2,354 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 489 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 started5,308 ha reached on 26 Aug0.6 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 26 Aug | 26.5 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 27 Aug | 28.1 °C | 27 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 28 Aug | 29.7 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 29 Aug | 28.4 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 30 Aug | 29.5 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 31 Aug | 29.0 °C | 30 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 1 Sept | 29.8 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 2 Sept | 30.9 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 3 Sept | 29.5 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 5 Sept after | 29.1 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 6 Sept after | 28.5 °C | 37 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 7 Sept after | 28.2 °C | 36 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 8 Sept after | 30.4 °C | 29 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 9 Sept after | 30.2 °C | 27 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Sept after | 28.9 °C | 31 % | 34 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 35 |
| 11 Sept after | 28.5 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 12 Sept after | 27.7 °C | 28 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 13 Sept after | 29.3 °C | 19 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
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 3 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 24 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 152Every 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 · 34 days · 12 km away
- 12,274 haToliary-II17 October 2017 · 23 days · 21 km away
- 12,385 haToliary-IISeptember 2023 · 16 days · 32 km away
- 14,910 haToliary-II21 October 2021 · 20 days · 34 km away
- 13,011 haToliary-IISeptember 2018 · 14 days · 34 km away
- 14,445 haToliary-II14 October 2019 · 31 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sakaraha fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 August 2026 and 3 September 2026: 9 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 5,283 hectares (52.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sakaraha (5,308 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
- 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 152 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.
- 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.