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CN · China · –

Chuanying District fire, 14 March 2026 船营区 · Chuanying District, Jiutai District, Yongji County

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2026, 05:21 UTC

The fire started on 14 March 2026 in Chuanying District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,083 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 980 in China in 2026, of 1095.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,083ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Mar 2026 – 17 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
3
counties
Started on
14 Mar
2026
Heat detections
20
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
82MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Mar17 Mar
17 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

16 Mar 2026 · 29 MW · 4 17 Mar 2026 · 135 MW · 16
16 Mar 17 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

13°high
43km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 18 Mar.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 208 ha in 2021, 639 ha in 2023, 380 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 799 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
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

  1. Chuanying District 船营区 where it started
    850 ha reached on 16 Mar
    1.4 %
  2. Jiutai District 九台区
    130 ha
    0.0 %
  3. Yongji County 永吉县
    103 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 2025
Built-up area15 ha
Residents≈ 900

Inside the perimeter there were about 15 hectares of built-up land and about 900 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

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)
14 Mar 3.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
15 Mar 6.8 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
16 Mar 6.0 °C 15 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
17 Mar 13.2 °C 12 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Mar after 1.5 °C 20 % 55 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Mar 2026
After · 24 Mar 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 16 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 74: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak110 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10168 µg/m³
Optical depth1.70
12 Mar14 Mar16 Mar18 Mar20 Mar
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 20Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in China

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Chuanying District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 March 2026 and 17 March 2026: 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 1,083 hectares (10.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chuanying District (850 ha, 1.4 %); Jiutai District (130 ha, 0.0 %); Yongji County (103 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 13.2 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, 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.

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?

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 119.

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. 20 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 2025, 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 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.