Daowai District fire, March 2026 道外区 · Acheng District, Daowai District, Xiangfang District
The fire started on 21 March 2026 in Daowai District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 38th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1915 with a page). Number 32 in China in 2026, of 1094.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 13,409ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 21 Mar 2026 – 2 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- counties
- Started on
- 21 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 543
- in a single hotspot: 76 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 345MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.3 mm on 10 Apr.
This area had burned before
57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 207 ha in 2016, 1,082 ha in 2017, 384 ha in 2018, 246 ha in 2020, 3,823 ha in 2021, 1,953 ha in 2022, 288 ha in 2023, 1,516 ha in 2024, 2,608 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,590 ha that had burned before.
- 1,269 ha Acheng District fire, April 2021 1,948 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 980 ha Daowai District fire, April 2022 4,241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 955 ha Acheng District fire, April 2025 1,658 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 768 ha Acheng District fire, April 2021 1,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 431 ha Daowai District fire, November 2025 1,620 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 57 ha Acheng District fire, November 2025 4,218 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).
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
-
Acheng District 阿城区5,873 ha reached on 21 Mar2.5 %
-
5,617 ha reached on 21 Mar9.0 %
-
1,933 ha reached on 21 Mar5.7 %
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 257 hectares of built-up land and about 27,000 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Mar | 4.9 °C | 19 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 17 Mar | 10.4 °C | 15 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 18 Mar | 1.3 °C | 22 % | 55 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 19 Mar | -0.5 °C | 29 % | 48 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very low 4 |
| 20 Mar | 0.9 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 21 Mar | 10.7 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 22 Mar | 11.2 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 23 Mar | 12.0 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 24 Mar | 16.2 °C | 16 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 25 Mar | 15.3 °C | 33 % | 47 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 26 Mar | 13.4 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 27 Mar | 11.9 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 28 Mar | 13.1 °C | 20 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 29 Mar | 11.8 °C | 32 % | 54 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 30 Mar | 9.8 °C | 35 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 31 Mar | 13.3 °C | 21 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 1 Apr | 7.8 °C | 14 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 2 Apr | 13.5 °C | 11 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 3 Apr after | 4.9 °C | 47 % | 39 km/h | 11.7 mm | Very low 0 |
| 4 Apr after | 6.4 °C | 34 % | 31 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very low 0 |
| 5 Apr after | 4.5 °C | 73 % | 51 km/h | 4.2 mm | Very low 0 |
| 6 Apr after | 2.4 °C | 64 % | 44 km/h | 1.4 mm | Very low 0 |
| 7 Apr after | 10.2 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 8 Apr after | 14.6 °C | 26 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 7 |
| 9 Apr after | 14.4 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 10 Apr after | 6.2 °C | 35 % | 34 km/h | 9.3 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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 25 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 192 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 115: 7.7 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 · 543Every 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 Daowai District fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2026 and 2 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 13,409 hectares (134.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Acheng District (5,873 ha, 2.5 %); Daowai District (5,617 ha, 9.0 %); Xiangfang District (1,933 ha, 5.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 16.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 64 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 543 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.
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.