Skip to content
worldfires
en
MG · Madagascar · →

Taolagnaro fire, 17 September 2018 Taolagnaro, Vangaindrano

Out · last detection 3 Oct 2018, 10:38 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Taolagnaro, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,422 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 18 in Madagascar in 2018, of 48.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vangaindrano · 2024Vangaindrano · 2016Vangaindrano · 2024Vangaindrano · 2016

Burnt area
3,422ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
17 Sept 2018 – 3 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
17 Sept
2018
Heat detections
115
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
78MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept3 Oct
3 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2018 · 50 MW · 4 18 Sept 2018 · 42 MW · 5 21 Sept 2018 · 91 MW · 10 22 Sept 2018 · 160 MW · 18 23 Sept 2018 · 378 MW · 31 24 Sept 2018 · 31 MW · 5 25 Sept 2018 · 27 MW · 9 26 Sept 2018 · 126 MW · 18 27 Sept 2018 · 67 MW · 4 28 Sept 2018 · 30 MW · 5 29 Sept 2018 · 13 MW · 3 2 Oct 2018 · 1 MW · 1 3 Oct 2018 · 4 MW · 2
17 Sept 21 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 3 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

31°high
52km/h · peak gust
38%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 30 Sept.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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. Taolagnaro where it started
    2,150 ha reached on 17 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Vangaindrano
    1,284 ha reached on 22 Sept
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.31 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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)
21 Sept 30.4 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
22 Sept 30.6 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
23 Sept 29.7 °C 49 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
24 Sept 30.4 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Sept 28.3 °C 51 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
26 Sept 28.8 °C 57 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
27 Sept 30.1 °C 54 % 45 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 13
28 Sept 28.3 °C 51 % 50 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
29 Sept 28.1 °C 52 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
30 Sept 27.1 °C 51 % 44 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2018
After · 10 Oct 2018

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 · 115Every 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 Taolagnaro fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2018 to 3 October 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2018 to 29 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,422 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Taolagnaro (2,150 ha, 0.4 %); Vangaindrano (1,284 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.6 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, class Moderate.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 29 September 2018 → 3 October 2018.
  2. Start date: 21 September 2018 → 17 September 2018.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 21 September 2018 to 29 September 2018. 115 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.