Beng fire, 31 March 2019 Beng, Xay
The fire started on 31 March 2019 in Beng, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,210 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 199th largest in Oudomxay since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 103 in Laos in 2019, of 126.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Beng · 2017Beng · 2018Beng · 2018Beng · 2017
- Burnt area
- 2,210ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 31 Mar 2019 – 3 Apr 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Mar
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 67
- in a single hotspot: 140 MW
- Average daily power
- 1.3GW
- 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.
This area had burned before
75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 423 ha in 2016, 1,013 ha in 2017, 1,001 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,666 ha that had burned before.
- 948 ha Beng fire, April 2017 2,172 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 742 ha Beng fire, April 2018 2,709 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 259 ha Beng fire, April 2018 3,600 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 64 ha Beng fire, April 2017 3,130 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
Beng where it started1,993 ha1.2 %
-
229 ha0.1 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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.
Detections table · 67Every 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 Beng fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 March 2019 and 3 April 2019: 4 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 2,210 hectares (22.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Beng (1,993 ha, 1.2 %); Xay (229 ha, 0.1 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Laos (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.
Satellite cross-check
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. 67 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.