How long did the Sukamara fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2026 to 23 September 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2026 to 16 September 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,002 hectares (20.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sukamara (2,016 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 56 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.

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.

ID · Indonesia · 2026-09-11 → 2026-09-23

Sukamara fire, 11 September 2026 Sukamara

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2026, 06:31 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2026 in Sukamara, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,002 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 226th largest in Central Kalimantan since 2016 (of 317 with a page). Number 658 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1007.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sukamara · 2026 Kotawaringin Barat · 2026 Sukamara · 2019 Kotawaringin Barat · 2023

Burnt area: 2,002ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 11 Sept 2026 – 23 Sept 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; regencies
Started on: 11 Sept; 2026
Heat detections: 49; in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 57MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept23 Sept

Play back 21 Sept 2026

How it evolved, day by day

11 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 21 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

43km/h · peak gust

56%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 112 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (20 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

Sukamara where it started

2,016 ha reached on 11 Sept

0.6 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
11 Sept	31.2 °C	61 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Sept	31.5 °C	56 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
13 Sept	31.0 °C	64 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Sept	31.4 °C	57 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Sept	31.2 °C	56 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
16 Sept	30.8 °C	60 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Sept	30.3 °C	65 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Sept	31.5 °C	61 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Sept	31.5 °C	62 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
20 Sept	32.0 °C	60 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
21 Sept	31.2 °C	64 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
22 Sept	32.0 °C	60 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
23 Sept	31.0 °C	63 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Sept after	31.9 °C	61 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
25 Sept after	31.5 °C	65 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
26 Sept after	31.4 °C	66 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
27 Sept after	30.5 °C	68 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
28 Sept after	31.2 °C	64 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
29 Sept after	32.2 °C	59 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 Sept after	30.6 °C	67 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Oct after	30.0 °C	68 %	32 km/h	2.2 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 4 Sept 2026

After · 30 Sept 2026

Before After

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 · Copernicus

On 16 September 2026 the air beside the fire reached 216 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 97: 6.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak216 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10221 µg/m³

Optical depth4.70

WHO 15

910111213141516171819

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 49Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Indonesia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sukamara fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2026 to 23 September 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2026 to 16 September 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,002 hectares (20.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sukamara (2,016 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.0 °C, humidity dropped to 56 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2026 to 16 September 2026. 49 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.

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.

Where it burned