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KALIMANTAN FIRE WATCH

Pulang Pisau–Kapuas Complex · forensic view

Incident window
10 – 17 OCT 2026
Region
P. PISAU – KAPUAS peat coast
Sensor
VIIRS 375 m Suomi NPP
Latest detection
17 OCT · 17:43 UTC
ACTIVE — STILL BURNING 17 OCT
SNAPSHOT 18 OCT 2026 · 07:45 SGT · NASA FIRMS NRT
Real-time 3D terrain · cloud-free Sentinel-2 reference composite draped on a coastline-shaped landmass cut from the island · relief kept subtle — this peatland is near-flat CURSOR — · —
LATEST OBSERVED — 16–17 OCT 2026 · REAL VIIRS POINTS · BRIGHT = 17 OCT · FADED = 16 OCT
↑N
≈ 50 KM
Drag to orbit · Shift+drag to pan · Scroll or pinch to zoom · Double-click resets the view
IGNITION (PROXY) Sukamara coast cell SPREAD PATH W → E along the peat belt WIND SSE 7–9 km/h → smoke NNW SECTOR POINTS PLOTTED 5,797 BURNING BELT SPAN — BASE MAP: cloud-free Sentinel-2 reference composite (EOX Sentinel-2 cloudless — a median mosaic of cloud-masked Copernicus Sentinel-2 scenes) in register across the whole frame (109.85–115.05°E) — a clear-sky reference photograph of this land, not a photo of the fire week itself; every flame, scar and arrow on it is drawn from NASA FIRMS data · coastline, rivers & roads: OpenStreetMap · regency boundary: geoBoundaries · hillshade: SRTM via AWS Terrain Tiles, vertical exaggeration ×6

How bad is this?

The plain-words version, for everyone. Every number below shows where it came from and when.

Our assessment: “Extreme” — this page's own editorial rating, not an official scale. It fits because the season is among the worst on record by hotspot count, station air readings ran to about five times the hazardous threshold, and the fires were still growing on the last day checked. It is not “Catastrophic”: the season's total burned area (~0.9 million ha, Indonesia-wide) remains well below 2015 (~2.6 million ha) and 2019 (~1.65 million ha) — “worst since 2015” holds by hotspot count, not by area.

How the levels are set: Moderate — burning localised, air mostly healthy · Serious — several districts burning, air unhealthy in places · Severe — a major peat belt alight for weeks, hazardous air in at least one town · Extreme — a worst-tier season by hotspot count, air several times the hazardous threshold, still growing at the last check · Catastrophic — 2015 scale: millions of hectares burned, a regional haze emergency.

In one sentence: a huge area of Borneo's peatland is burning, the smoke has made the air dangerous to breathe in whole towns, and it is still not out.

SAT 17 OCT 2026 · last overpass 17:43 UTC

Cumulative detections · all Kalimantan · Suomi NPP

28,084

Running total of daily FIRMS detections, 10–17 Oct. Marker = selected day.

Rate of spread · modelled proxy

787 km²/day · peak 11 Oct

New footprint per day = daily detections × 0.1406 km² (one 375 m pixel). A proxy — repeat overpasses inflate it; use for shape, not hectares.

Elevation profile · along spread path A→B→C

2 – 30 m · peat lowland the whole way

A Sukamara coast → B Tanjung Puting → C Pulang Pisau. Indicative lowland elevations. The point of this panel: there is no slope story here — drainage and peat dryness, not terrain, drive this fire.

What the data says — forensic findings

Each finding is tied to the plotted FIRMS data above; modelled elements are flagged.

The shift

The fire centre has moved to Central Kalimantan

A near-continuous southern peat belt (2–4°S, 110–115°E) holds 20,205 of 28,084 detections (71.9%). The old headline is gone: a tight Kendawangan box (110.0–110.9°E, 1.8–2.6°S) records only 242 detections all week. Longitude shares tell the same story — 64.3% of detections sit between 111°E and 114.5°E, against 9.8% west of 111°E and 25.9% east of 114.5°E.

Largest complex

Pulang Pisau–Kapuas–Palangka Raya sector

10,261 detections (36.5%) inside the sector box (113.0–114.8°E, 1.5–3.2°S), centroid ≈ 2.51°S, 113.83°E — and it was still accelerating at the end of the window: 2,881 detections on 16–17 Oct, 1,794 on 17 Oct alone. Mean FRP is only 4.4 MW (max 205.4 MW): broad, persistent peat burning rather than a few intense fronts.

Densest ground

Sukamara–Lamandau coast: the densest single cell

The densest 0.25° cell sits on the south coast at 3.00–3.25°S, 110.50–110.75°E (Sukamara/Lamandau coast, west of Pangkalan Bun) — 1,791 detections in the window, 528 of them on 16–17 Oct. The second core is the Kotawaringin / Tanjung Puting sector (1,620 detections; NOAA-20: 2,042), including a 0.25° cell at 3.25°S, 112.0°E with 1,432 detections.

Status · 17 Oct

Not winding down — and mostly a night fire

17 Oct logged 4,825 detections, the window's second-busiest day. Across the week 21,086 of 28,084 detections (75%) came at night — VIIRS keeps seeing heat after dark because peat smoulders continuously. Total FRP for the window: 171,320 MW; strongest single detection 843 MW (11 Oct, west coast). NOAA-20 independently records 31,422 detections over the same ground — same geography, different overpasses.

Regional breakdown & daily counts

All-Kalimantan context · VIIRS 375 m detections by longitude band, 10–17 Oct 2026 · Suomi NPP · band FRP components rounded (window total 171,320 MW)

Air & weather at the fire line

Modelled snapshot, Sat 17 Oct ~22:00 WIB · air quality: US AQI (modelled, CAMS via Open-Meteo) · wind at 10 m

Surface winds across the southern fire zone blow from the south to south-east at 6–9 km/h, carrying smoke inland toward Palangka Raya and Kapuas. The severity section above uses Indonesia's ISPU station readings (Katingan 1,551; Palangka Raya 1,294 on 15 Oct) — ISPU and the US AQI on these cards are different scales, and their numbers are not comparable. The cards are CAMS model estimates, not ground sensors.

Situation brief

Data sources & accuracy