How long did the Bueng Sam Phan fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2021 to 23 March 2021 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 March 2021 to 21 March 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,099 hectares (11.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bueng Sam Phan (1,103 ha, 1.5 %); Nong Phai (3 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.

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 · 2021-03-15 → 2021-03-23

Bueng Sam Phan fire, March 2021 บึงสามพัน · Bueng Sam Phan, Nong Phai

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2021, 06:09 UTC

The fire started on 15 March 2021 in Bueng Sam Phan, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,099 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in Phetchabun Province since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 157 in Thailand in 2021, of 187.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.9 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: Phakdi Chumphon · 2016 Phakdi Chumphon · 2020 Nong Phai · 2016 Phakdi Chumphon · 2026

Burnt area: 1,099ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 15 Mar 2021 – 23 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 15 Mar; 2021
Heat detections: 23; in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 39MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Mar23 Mar

Play back 21 Mar 2021

How it evolved, day by day

15 Mar 16 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar

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

24km/h · peak gust

47%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 202 ha in 2016, 48 ha in 2017, 2 ha in 2018, 480 ha in 2019, 749 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 846 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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

Bueng Sam Phan บึงสามพัน where it started

1,103 ha reached on 15 Mar

1.5 %
Nong Phai หนองไผ่

3 ha

0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020

Built-up area1.3 ha

Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (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)
15 Mar	33.4 °C	52 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
16 Mar	33.8 °C	53 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
17 Mar	34.3 °C	51 %	21 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
18 Mar	34.6 °C	53 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
19 Mar	35.3 °C	49 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
20 Mar	35.8 °C	47 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
21 Mar	34.5 °C	53 %	24 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 13
22 Mar	30.4 °C	52 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
23 Mar	32.0 °C	48 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
24 Mar after	33.7 °C	45 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
25 Mar after	34.6 °C	46 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
26 Mar after	34.7 °C	48 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
27 Mar after	35.4 °C	50 %	21 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 18
28 Mar after	35.5 °C	49 %	28 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Mar 2021

After · 30 Mar 2021

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 · 23Every 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 Bueng Sam Phan fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2021 to 23 March 2021 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 March 2021 to 21 March 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,099 hectares (11.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bueng Sam Phan (1,103 ha, 1.5 %); Nong Phai (3 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 19 March 2021 to 21 March 2021. 23 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