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Sukamara fire, August 2019 Sukamara

Out · last measured on 5 Oct 2019

The fire started on 28 August 2019 in Sukamara, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,228 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Central Kalimantan since 2016 (of 318 with a page). Number 34 in Indonesia in 2019, of 418.

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We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
9,228ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
28 Aug 2019 – 5 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
regencies
Started on
28 Aug
2019
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

31°high
51km/h · peak gust
53%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 382 ha in 2017, 4,002 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,442 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Sukamara where it started
    9,293 ha
    2.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
28 Aug 29.8 °C 63 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
29 Aug 29.5 °C 56 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
30 Aug 28.9 °C 62 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
31 Aug 29.2 °C 67 % 46 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 12
1 Sept 29.7 °C 66 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm Low 11
2 Sept 29.7 °C 65 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
3 Sept 29.7 °C 63 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
4 Sept 29.6 °C 61 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
5 Sept 29.6 °C 62 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
6 Sept 29.6 °C 62 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
7 Sept 30.0 °C 60 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
8 Sept 29.5 °C 68 % 42 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
9 Sept 29.8 °C 67 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
10 Sept 30.2 °C 56 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
11 Sept 30.6 °C 57 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Sept 29.6 °C 58 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
13 Sept 29.1 °C 61 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Sept 29.3 °C 63 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Sept 29.3 °C 65 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
16 Sept 29.3 °C 67 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Sept 29.4 °C 68 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
18 Sept 29.6 °C 65 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
19 Sept 29.7 °C 64 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
20 Sept 29.1 °C 68 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 15
21 Sept 29.8 °C 67 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
22 Sept 29.9 °C 67 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
23 Sept 30.0 °C 69 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
24 Sept 28.4 °C 77 % 41 km/h 4.9 mm Very low 2
25 Sept 30.2 °C 65 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
26 Sept 31.2 °C 67 % 48 km/h 1.9 mm Low 7
27 Sept 28.0 °C 81 % 37 km/h 12.9 mm Very low 0
28 Sept 29.8 °C 67 % 36 km/h 10.3 mm Very low 0
29 Sept 30.2 °C 65 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
30 Sept 28.7 °C 71 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 4
1 Oct 29.7 °C 65 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
2 Oct 28.6 °C 73 % 33 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 1
3 Oct 30.4 °C 66 % 31 km/h 2.8 mm Very low 1
4 Oct 30.5 °C 61 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 4
5 Oct 31.1 °C 53 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
6 Oct after 29.1 °C 64 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm Low 7
7 Oct after 29.7 °C 65 % 36 km/h 6.2 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2019
After · 12 Oct 2019

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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sukamara fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 August 2019 and 5 October 2019: 39 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 9,228 hectares (92.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sukamara (9,293 ha, 2.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.2 °C, humidity dropped to 53 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Indonesia (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.

Emergency number: 112

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

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.