Sakaraha fire, 15 October 2026 Sakaraha
The fire started on 15 October 2026 in Sakaraha, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,228 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 45th largest in Atsimo-Andrefana since 2016 (of 49 with a page). Number 83 in Madagascar in 2026, of 107.
The power measured by the satellite is low (29.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
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Is it still active?
No detections since 30 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. 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.
- Burnt area
- 2,228ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 15 Oct 2026 – 30 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 15 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 63
- in a single hotspot: 29 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 55MW
- 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 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,124 ha in 2016, 2,593 ha in 2017, 945 ha in 2019, 1,859 ha in 2020, 1,288 ha in 2021, 191 ha in 2023, 603 ha in 2024, 623 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,180 ha that had burned before.
- 2,124 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2016 9,734 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,027 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2017 11,633 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,103 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2021 9,405 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 747 ha Sakaraha fire, September 2020 7,982 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 461 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2019 6,052 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 265 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2024 3,235 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 191 ha Sakaraha fire, October 2023 5,248 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 184 ha Sakaraha fire, November 2021 2,354 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 started2,239 ha reached on 15 Oct0.3 %
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 0.15 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Oct | 36.9 °C | 19 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 16 Oct | 36.0 °C | 21 % | 45 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Oct | 36.3 °C | 18 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 18 Oct | 36.5 °C | 19 % | 45 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Oct | 35.9 °C | 23 % | 40 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 40 |
| 20 Oct | 35.3 °C | 23 % | 41 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 33 |
| 21 Oct | 35.0 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Oct | 35.7 °C | 28 % | 39 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Oct | 36.2 °C | 29 % | 50 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 24 Oct | 33.9 °C | 33 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 25 Oct | 35.1 °C | 20 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 26 Oct | 38.0 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 27 Oct | 37.3 °C | 21 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 49 |
| 28 Oct | 31.4 °C | 45 % | 48 km/h | 3.3 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 29 Oct | 27.7 °C | 49 % | 51 km/h | 2.9 mm | Low 8 |
| 30 Oct | 27.8 °C | 29 % | 54 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 26 |
| 31 Oct after | 28.7 °C | 31 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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 16 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 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 · 63Every 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 · 9 km away
- 12,274 haToliary-II10 October 2017 · 36 days · 19 km away
- 12,385 haToliary-IISeptember 2023 · 23 days · 32 km away
- 14,910 haToliary-II14 October 2021 · 34 days · 34 km away
- 23,015 haToliary-II5 October 2017 · 41 days · 35 km away
- 14,445 haToliary-II7 October 2019 · 38 days · 35 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 15 October 2026 to 30 October 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2026 to 30 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,228 hectares (22.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sakaraha (2,239 ha, 0.3 %).
- Is the Sakaraha fire still active?
- No fire detections since 30 Oct 2026, 11:19 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 61 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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 26 October 2026.
- Mapped perimeter arrives: from ≈ 2,856 ha estimated from hotspots to 2,187 ha.
- Start date: 17 October 2026 → 15 October 2026.
- Name: Toliary-II → Sakaraha.
- Area: ≈ 2,156 → ≈ 2,856 ha.
- Start date: 16 October 2026 → 17 October 2026.
- Page published (≈ 2,156 ha).
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 22 October 2026 to 30 October 2026. 63 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.