Botene fire, 20 March 2023 Botene
The fire started on 20 March 2023 in Botene, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,713 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 27th largest in Xaignabouli since 2016 (of 161 with a page). Number 36 in Laos in 2023, of 239.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Botene · 2016Botene · 2016Botene · 2019Botene · 2020
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
- 7,713ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 20 Mar 2023 – 30 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2023
Where it burned
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,591 ha in 2016, 155 ha in 2017, 57 ha in 2018, 4,243 ha in 2019, 2,596 ha in 2020, 8 ha in 2021, 187 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,251 ha that had burned before.
- 1,894 ha Botene fire, March 2016 8,704 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,390 ha Botene fire, March 2016 2,609 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 868 ha Botene fire, March 2019 6,903 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 552 ha Botene fire, February 2020 2,056 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
-
Botene where it started7,755 ha7.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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
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
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Botene fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 March 2023 and 30 March 2023: 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 7,713 hectares (77.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Botene (7,755 ha, 7.1 %).
- 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
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.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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 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.