How long did the Zhanakorganskiy fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2026 to 27 March 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 March 2026 to 25 March 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,195 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Zhanakorganskiy (3,208 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 24.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

KZ · Kazakhstan · 2026-03-13 → 2026-03-27

Zhanakorganskiy fire, March 2026 Жаңақорған ауданы · Zhanakorganskiy

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2026, 08:57 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2026 in Zhanakorganskiy, Kazakhstan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,195 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 46 in Kazakhstan in 2026, of 51.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Burnt area: 3,195ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 13 Mar 2026 – 27 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 13 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 59; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 37MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar27 Mar

Play back 27 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 21 Mar 24 Mar 27 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

24°high

51km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 3 Apr.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 296 ha in 2016, 228 ha in 2019, 475 ha in 2020, 220 ha in 2021, 206 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,108 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Zhanakorganskiy Жаңақорған ауданы where it started

3,208 ha reached on 14 Mar

0.2 %

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 area0.29 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.29 hectares of 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)
8 Mar	15.4 °C	50 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 1
9 Mar	7.8 °C	77 %	44 km/h	4.7 mm	Very low 0
10 Mar	1.3 °C	55 %	51 km/h	0.5 mm	Very low 0
11 Mar	-3.4 °C	48 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 0
12 Mar	6.6 °C	35 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 0
13 Mar	8.9 °C	35 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
14 Mar	13.4 °C	34 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
15 Mar	14.1 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
16 Mar	15.3 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 5
17 Mar	16.7 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
18 Mar	19.2 °C	25 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
19 Mar	17.5 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 7
20 Mar	19.2 °C	34 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
21 Mar	21.1 °C	24 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
22 Mar	19.8 °C	47 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 7
23 Mar	20.9 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
24 Mar	22.4 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
25 Mar	24.5 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
26 Mar	28.1 °C	12 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
27 Mar	29.8 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Mar after	27.5 °C	10 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Mar after	23.8 °C	23 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
30 Mar after	25.3 °C	27 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
31 Mar after	28.1 °C	20 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
1 Apr after	29.7 °C	15 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
2 Apr after	31.6 °C	9 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Apr after	25.4 °C	37 %	48 km/h	1.3 mm	Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Mar 2026

After · 3 Apr 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 22 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak36 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1073 µg/m³

Optical depth0.63

WHO 15

111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 59Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Zhanakorganskiy fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2026 to 27 March 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 March 2026 to 25 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,195 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Zhanakorganskiy (3,208 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 24.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Kazakhstan (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 March 2026 → 27 March 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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

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 13 March 2026 to 25 March 2026. 59 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 (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.

Where it burned