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Toliary-II fire, 17 October 2017 Toliary-II

Out · last detection 8 Nov 2017, 10:07 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2017 in Toliary-II, Madagascar, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,274 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Atsimo-Andrefana since 2016 (of 45 with a page). Number 2 in Madagascar in 2017, of 57.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Toliary-II · 2016Sakaraha · 2017Toliary-II · 2023Toliary-II · 2017

Burnt area
12,274ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
17 Oct 2017 – 8 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
17 Oct
2017
Heat detections
959
in a single hotspot: 184 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
470MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct8 Nov
8 Nov 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Oct 2017 · 138 MW · 11 18 Oct 2017 · 309 MW · 8 19 Oct 2017 · 689 MW · 70 20 Oct 2017 · 482 MW · 53 21 Oct 2017 · 204 MW · 26 22 Oct 2017 · 411 MW · 38 23 Oct 2017 · 394 MW · 24 25 Oct 2017 · 59 MW · 11 26 Oct 2017 · 286 MW · 36 27 Oct 2017 · 85 MW · 15 29 Oct 2017 · 52 MW · 7 30 Oct 2017 · 256 MW · 33 31 Oct 2017 · 627 MW · 66 1 Nov 2017 · 1,759 MW · 78 2 Nov 2017 · 1,433 MW · 87 3 Nov 2017 · 407 MW · 74 4 Nov 2017 · 476 MW · 75 5 Nov 2017 · 1,000 MW · 73 6 Nov 2017 · 294 MW · 37 7 Nov 2017 · 495 MW · 30 8 Nov 2017 · 22 MW · 9
17 Oct 20 Oct 23 Oct 27 Oct 31 Oct 1 Nov 3 Nov 6 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
55km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 17 Nov.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,856 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (123 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. Toliary-II where it started
    12,309 ha reached on 10 Oct
    1.3 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.63 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.63 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
10 Oct 31.2 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Oct 30.2 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Oct 26.4 °C 54 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Oct 25.6 °C 41 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Oct 24.8 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
15 Oct 27.1 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Oct 30.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Oct 32.4 °C 33 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Oct 26.6 °C 65 % 40 km/h 2.1 mm Low 8
19 Oct 30.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Oct 32.0 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Oct 33.9 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
22 Oct 34.7 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Oct 33.9 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Oct 32.5 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Oct 31.3 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Oct 31.9 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
27 Oct 31.7 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
28 Oct 26.0 °C 56 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Oct 26.2 °C 45 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Oct 29.6 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Oct 31.2 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Nov 31.1 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Nov 31.5 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Nov 30.9 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
4 Nov 32.3 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 43
5 Nov 32.0 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Nov 31.2 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Nov 29.0 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Nov 28.4 °C 39 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Nov after 23.0 °C 76 % 43 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 3
10 Nov after 27.0 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
11 Nov after 28.4 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Nov after 28.1 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Nov after 30.2 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Nov after 30.4 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Nov after 30.5 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Nov after 34.1 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
17 Nov after 31.0 °C 44 % 44 km/h 3.5 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Oct 2017
After · 15 Nov 2017

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 · 959Every 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 Toliary-II fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 October 2017 and 8 November 2017: 23 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 12,274 hectares (122.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Toliary-II (12,309 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 959 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 2015, 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.