Chomphet fire, April 2026 Hongsa, Chomphet
The fire started on 5 April 2026 in Chomphet, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,824 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 40th largest in Luang Prabang since 2016 (of 295 with a page). Number 78 in Laos in 2026, of 308.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,824ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 5 Apr 2026 – 17 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 5 Apr
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 126
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 40MW
- 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
30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 418 ha in 2017, 519 ha in 2018, 774 ha in 2020, 272 ha in 2021, 445 ha in 2022, 355 ha in 2023, 413 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,722 ha that had burned before.
- 507 ha Chomphet fire, March 2020 8,362 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 359 ha Chomphet fire, April 2018 2,849 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 298 ha Hongsa fire, April 2017 8,764 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 160 ha Hongsa fire, April 2018 3,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 112 ha Hongsa fire, March 2023 2,500 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
-
4,083 ha2.7 %
-
Chomphet where it started1,770 ha1.3 %
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.
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 18 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 158 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 132: 8.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 0Every 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 Chomphet fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2026 and 17 April 2026: 13 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 5,824 hectares (58.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Hongsa (4,083 ha, 2.7 %); Chomphet (1,770 ha, 1.3 %).
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 29 March 2026 → 5 April 2026.
- Name: Hongsa → Chomphet.
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; 2 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.
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.