How long did the Ban Thi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2019 to 6 April 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 March 2019 to 5 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,300 hectares (13.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ban Thi (762 ha, 5.5 %); Mae On (411 ha, 0.9 %); Mueang Lamphun (134 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

TH · Thailand · 2019-03-23 → 2019-04-06

Ban Thi fire, March 2019 บ้านธิ · Ban Thi, Mae On, Mueang Lamphun

Out · last detection 5 Apr 2019, 06:36 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2019 in Ban Thi, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,300 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 22th largest in Lamphun Province since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 242 in Thailand in 2019, of 386.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.5 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…

Suggestions: Ban Thi · 2018 San Kamphaeng · 2017 Mae On · 2026 Doi Saket · 2026

Burnt area: 1,300ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 23 Mar 2019 – 6 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 23 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 41; in a single hotspot: 13 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 18MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar6 Apr

Play back 5 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

25 Mar 30 Mar 1 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

32km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 165 ha in 2016, 676 ha in 2017, 421 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 905 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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

Ban Thi บ้านธิ where it started

762 ha reached on 25 Mar

5.5 %
Mae On แม่ออน

411 ha reached on 31 Mar

0.9 %
Mueang Lamphun เมืองลำพูน

134 ha reached on 31 Mar

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
25 Mar	35.0 °C	30 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Mar	33.8 °C	41 %	25 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
27 Mar	33.8 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
28 Mar	34.8 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
29 Mar	35.0 °C	18 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
30 Mar	35.1 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
31 Mar	35.6 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Apr	35.7 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Apr	35.4 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Apr	36.2 °C	23 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Apr	35.7 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Apr	35.7 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
6 Apr	35.9 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Apr after	36.7 °C	26 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Apr after	36.8 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Apr after	36.7 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Apr after	36.9 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Apr after	37.2 °C	24 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Apr after	37.1 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Apr after	38.0 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
14 Apr after	38.0 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Apr after	38.5 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Mar 2019

After · 13 Apr 2019

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.

Detections table · 41Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ban Thi fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2019 to 6 April 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 March 2019 to 5 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,300 hectares (13.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Ban Thi (762 ha, 5.5 %); Mae On (411 ha, 0.9 %); Mueang Lamphun (134 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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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 199 · 191.

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 29 March 2019 to 5 April 2019. 41 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.

Where it burned