Baoqing County fire, 25 October 2017 宝清县 · Baoqing County
The fire started on 25 October 2017 in Baoqing County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,024 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1779th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1852 with a page). Number 234 in China in 2017, of 243.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 1,024ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 25 Oct 2017 – 27 Oct 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 25 Oct
- 2017
- Danger at start
- 13
- Moderate · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,025 ha0.1 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 2.0 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 25 Oct | 10.8 °C | 21 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 26 Oct | 12.3 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 27 Oct | 13.7 °C | 36 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 28 Oct after | 18.0 °C | 42 % | 51 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 29 Oct after | 8.2 °C | 25 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 30 Oct after | 5.9 °C | 23 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 31 Oct after | 9.1 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 Nov after | 9.7 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 2 Nov after | 7.4 °C | 38 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 3 Nov after | -0.6 °C | 26 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 4 Nov after | 2.6 °C | 35 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 5 Nov after | 9.5 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 6 Nov after | 11.9 °C | 46 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
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.
Other fires nearby
- 5,010 haBaoqing County 宝清县 22 October 2026 · 8 days · 7 km away
- 3,057 haBaoqing County 宝清县 23 October 2026 · 6 days · 9 km away
- 10,813 haBaoqing County 宝清县25 October 2025 · 11 days · 28 km away
- 12,772 haBaoqing County 宝清县23 October 2025 · 7 days · 32 km away
- 4,313 haBaoqing County 宝清县17 April 2025 · 1 day · 34 km away
- 3,714 haBaoqing County 宝清县25 October 2025 · 1 day · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Baoqing County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 October 2017 and 27 October 2017: 3 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 1,024 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Baoqing County (1,025 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 13.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
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.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
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 ADM3 (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.