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Soalala fire, September 2022 Soalala

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2022, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2022 in Soalala, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 41 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,864 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3th largest in Boeny since 2016 (of 41 with a page). The largest in Madagascar in 2022, of 34.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Soalala · 2020Soalala · 2020Soalala · 2026Soalala · 2018

Burnt area
15,864ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
41days
15 Sept 2022 – 25 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
15 Sept
2022
Heat detections
1,498
in a single hotspot: 467 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
786MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept25 Oct
25 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2022 · 2,160 MW · 19 16 Sept 2022 · 297 MW · 13 17 Sept 2022 · 89 MW · 8 18 Sept 2022 · 874 MW · 12 19 Sept 2022 · 780 MW · 16 20 Sept 2022 · 461 MW · 38 21 Sept 2022 · 1,244 MW · 61 22 Sept 2022 · 39 MW · 19 23 Sept 2022 · 1,348 MW · 65 24 Sept 2022 · 1,505 MW · 46 25 Sept 2022 · 818 MW · 43 26 Sept 2022 · 1,294 MW · 68 27 Sept 2022 · 1,930 MW · 108 28 Sept 2022 · 4,767 MW · 165 29 Sept 2022 · 2,681 MW · 144 30 Sept 2022 · 1,874 MW · 89 1 Oct 2022 · 1,407 MW · 66 2 Oct 2022 · 2,282 MW · 87 3 Oct 2022 · 640 MW · 53 4 Oct 2022 · 555 MW · 46 5 Oct 2022 · 168 MW · 16 6 Oct 2022 · 80 MW · 11 7 Oct 2022 · 373 MW · 55 8 Oct 2022 · 348 MW · 30 9 Oct 2022 · 512 MW · 48 10 Oct 2022 · 1,848 MW · 39 11 Oct 2022 · 24 MW · 6 12 Oct 2022 · 32 MW · 9 13 Oct 2022 · 223 MW · 26 14 Oct 2022 · 291 MW · 31 15 Oct 2022 · 185 MW · 16 16 Oct 2022 · 45 MW · 7 17 Oct 2022 · 105 MW · 11 19 Oct 2022 · 9 MW · 2 20 Oct 2022 · 67 MW · 6 21 Oct 2022 · 33 MW · 3 22 Oct 2022 · 31 MW · 7 23 Oct 2022 · 2 MW · 1 24 Oct 2022 · 20 MW · 4 25 Oct 2022 · 11 MW · 4
15 Sept 21 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 3 Oct 9 Oct 15 Oct 22 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 26 Oct.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 355 ha in 2017, 1,042 ha in 2020, 736 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,891 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (159 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

  1. Soalala where it started
    15,900 ha reached on 15 Sept
    2.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
15 Sept 33.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept 33.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 33.0 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Sept 33.9 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Sept 33.3 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Sept 34.0 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Sept 33.7 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Sept 34.4 °C 31 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 48
23 Sept 36.0 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Sept 35.5 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept 35.6 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Sept 35.6 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept 35.2 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Sept 33.7 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Sept 34.1 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Sept 34.2 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Oct 33.1 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Oct 33.9 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct 31.5 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Oct 32.9 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Oct 35.1 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Oct 35.8 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 36.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 34.7 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Oct 34.2 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 34.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
11 Oct 34.4 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 34.6 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Oct 35.3 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Oct 33.7 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Oct 33.0 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Oct 32.2 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
17 Oct 31.5 °C 57 % 32 km/h 2.3 mm Low 10
18 Oct 33.5 °C 37 % 31 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 20
19 Oct 33.4 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Oct 34.3 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Oct 34.5 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
22 Oct 33.2 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.6 mm High 32
23 Oct 31.9 °C 49 % 30 km/h 0.8 mm High 21
24 Oct 33.4 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm High 24
25 Oct 32.3 °C 50 % 34 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 19
26 Oct after 30.9 °C 61 % 32 km/h 1.7 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2022
After · 1 Nov 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 1,498Every 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 Madagascar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Soalala fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 September 2022 and 25 October 2022: 41 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 15,864 hectares (158.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Soalala (15,900 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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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. 1,498 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.