Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo fire, October 2026 Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo
The fire started on 18 October 2026 in Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo, Guyana, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,311 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 17 in Guyana in 2026, of 28.
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 05:52 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 1,311ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 18 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- regions
- Started on
- 18 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 94
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Danger at start
- 9
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 70MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 578 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 534 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo where it started1,321 ha reached on 18 Oct0.0 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18 Oct | 33.7 °C | 47 % | 30 km/h | 2.5 mm | Low 9 |
| 19 Oct | 33.7 °C | 54 % | 24 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 20 Oct | 35.5 °C | 39 % | 27 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 21 Oct | 35.6 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 22 Oct | 35.2 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 23 Oct | 35.1 °C | 43 % | 27 km/h | 3.2 mm | Low 9 |
| 24 Oct | 35.8 °C | 40 % | 30 km/h | 0.4 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 25 Oct | 36.1 °C | 39 % | 29 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 26 Oct | 36.2 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 27 Oct | 35.4 °C | 44 % | 30 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 28 Oct | 35.1 °C | 47 % | 29 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 29 Oct | 35.9 °C | 44 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 23 |
| 30 Oct | 34.9 °C | 43 % | 33 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 23 |
| 31 Oct | 35.4 °C | 42 % | 28 km/h | 1.1 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 1 Nov | 36.0 °C | 39 % | 35 km/h | 1.1 mm | High 23 |
| 2 Nov | 36.5 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 1.8 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 3 Nov | 35.8 °C | 43 % | 30 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 22 |
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 28 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 29 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 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)
Detections table · 94Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,311 hectares (13.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo (1,321 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 05:52 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guyana (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: 912 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 2 November 2026.
- Area: 1,035 → 1,311 ha.
- Page published (1,035 ha).
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 94 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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 ADM1 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.