Sumba Timur fire, 12 August 2026 Sumba Timur
The fire started on 12 August 2026 in Sumba Timur, Indonesia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,911 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 22th largest in East Nusa Tenggara since 2016 (of 40 with a page). Number 697 in Indonesia in 2026, of 1009.
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Suggestions: Sumba Timur · 2026Sumba Timur · 2026
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but not yet its hotspots: NASA publishes the yearly hotspot archive only once the year closes. The page picks them up automatically when they are available.
- Burnt area
- 1,911ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 12 Aug 2026 – 22 Aug 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- regencies
- Started on
- 12 Aug
- 2026
- Danger at start
- 17
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 142 ha in 2016, 764 ha in 2017, 9 ha in 2019, 70 ha in 2020, 135 ha in 2021, 541 ha in 2022, 116 ha in 2023, 394 ha in 2024, 859 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,699 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Jakarta boundary: geoBoundaries · Badan Pusat Statistik (BPS - Statistics Indonesia), World Food Programme, OCHA ROAP (CC BY 3.0 IGO).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Sumba Timur where it started1,924 ha0.3 %
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 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Aug | 28.2 °C | 51 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 13 Aug | 29.0 °C | 50 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 14 Aug | 29.1 °C | 50 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 15 Aug | 29.0 °C | 54 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 16 Aug | 28.5 °C | 53 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 Aug | 28.9 °C | 47 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Aug | 29.0 °C | 47 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 19 Aug | 28.3 °C | 41 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Aug | 28.8 °C | 38 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 21 Aug | 27.9 °C | 49 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Aug | 28.1 °C | 52 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 40 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Aug after | 28.9 °C | 47 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 25 Aug after | 29.3 °C | 40 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 36 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 49 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 28 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 45 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Aug after | 28.6 °C | 52 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 30 Aug after | 29.0 °C | 50 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 31 Aug after | 30.4 °C | 41 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 1 Sept after | 29.6 °C | 37 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
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 20 August 2026 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 17: 1.2 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)
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sumba Timur fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 August 2026 and 22 August 2026: 11 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 1,911 hectares (19.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Sumba Timur (1,924 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 29.1 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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
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.
- 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.
- 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.