Soalala fire, September 2024 Soalala
The fire started on 25 September 2024 in Soalala, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,838 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 2th largest in Boeny since 2016 (of 41 with a page). The largest in Madagascar in 2024, of 54.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 19,838ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 25 Sept 2024 – 18 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 25 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 795
- in a single hotspot: 213 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 848MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 622 ha in 2016, 9,406 ha in 2017, 3,511 ha in 2018, 5,323 ha in 2020, 1,797 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,777 ha that had burned before.
- 4,495 ha Soalala fire, October 2020 6,330 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,043 ha Soalala fire, October 2017 3,485 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,511 ha Soalala fire, October 2018 4,956 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,713 ha Soalala fire, September 2017 3,203 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,797 ha Soalala fire, September 2022 15,864 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 828 ha Soalala fire, November 2020 2,297 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
-
Soalala where it started19,829 ha reached on 25 Sept2.6 %
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 0.20 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Sept | 34.0 °C | 32 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 26 Sept | 34.9 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 27 Sept | 34.5 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 28 Sept | 33.2 °C | 44 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 29 Sept | 32.2 °C | 46 % | 35 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 31 |
| 30 Sept | 34.2 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Oct | 31.3 °C | 54 % | 30 km/h | 1.6 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 2 Oct | 34.0 °C | 45 % | 38 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 3 Oct | 35.3 °C | 29 % | 46 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Oct | 33.8 °C | 36 % | 42 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 26 |
| 5 Oct | 33.4 °C | 30 % | 37 km/h | 0.9 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Oct | 31.9 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Oct | 30.3 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 23 |
| 8 Oct | 34.5 °C | 29 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 9 Oct | 34.4 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Oct | 35.8 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Oct | 36.1 °C | 22 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Oct | 36.1 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 13 Oct | 35.1 °C | 31 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 14 Oct | 34.1 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Oct | 33.0 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Oct | 34.7 °C | 27 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 17 Oct | 34.3 °C | 34 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 18 Oct | 33.2 °C | 37 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 19 Oct after | 34.5 °C | 29 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Oct after | 34.3 °C | 35 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Oct after | 36.6 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 22 Oct after | 36.7 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 23 Oct after | 35.8 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct after | 35.8 °C | 29 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 25 Oct after | 34.8 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Oct after | 35.0 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Oct after | 33.5 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 28 Oct after | 35.5 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
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 11 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 71 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 · 795Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,485 haSoalalaOctober 2017 · 4 days · 1 km away
- 4,956 haSoalalaOctober 2018 · 4 days · 8 km away
- 3,203 haSoalalaSeptember 2017 · 14 days · 8 km away
- 6,330 haSoalalaOctober 2020 · 21 days · 9 km away
- 15,864 haSoalalaSeptember 2022 · 41 days · 18 km away
- 9,086 haSoalala 14 October 2026 · 13 days · 22 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Soalala fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 September 2024 to 18 October 2024 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2024 to 17 October 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,838 hectares (198.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Soalala (19,829 ha, 2.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 September 2024 to 17 October 2024. 795 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.