Boli County fire, 22 October 2017 勃利县 · Boli County, Huanan County
The fire started on 22 October 2017 in Boli County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,911 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 31th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1765 with a page). Number 3 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
- 13,911ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 22 Oct 2017 – 1 Nov 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 22 Oct
- 2017
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.5 mm on 7 Nov.
This area had burned before
5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 633 ha in 2016.
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
-
13,908 ha3.1 %
-
Huanan County 桦南县13 ha0.0 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct | 4.9 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 23 Oct | 7.6 °C | 17 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 24 Oct | 13.1 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 25 Oct | 12.1 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 26 Oct | 13.0 °C | 23 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 27 Oct | 14.6 °C | 37 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 28 Oct | 18.7 °C | 40 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 29 Oct | 5.6 °C | 26 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 30 Oct | 6.3 °C | 26 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 31 Oct | 10.3 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 1 Nov | 9.3 °C | 24 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 2 Nov after | 5.3 °C | 30 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 3 Nov after | 0.3 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 4 Nov after | 1.7 °C | 38 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 5 Nov after | 11.5 °C | 25 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 6 Nov after | 12.4 °C | 48 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 7 Nov after | 5.8 °C | 82 % | 20 km/h | 4.5 mm | Very low 0 |
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
- 5,310 haBoli County 勃利县30 March 2023 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 5,052 haHuanan County 桦南县20 April 2021 · 3 days · 13 km away
- 48,574 haBoli County 勃利县21 October 2025 · 17 days · 18 km away
- 5,113 haHuanan County 桦南县14 March 2026 · 13 days · 19 km away
- 7,622 haHuanan County 桦南县17 March 2026 · 1 day · 24 km away
- 22,367 haYilan County 依兰县22 October 2025 · 13 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Boli County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 October 2017 and 1 November 2017: 11 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 13,911 hectares (139.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Boli County (13,908 ha, 3.1 %); Huanan County (13 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, 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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- 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.
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.