How long did the Dechang County fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2026 and 21 January 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 5,070 hectares (50.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dechang County (4,791 ha, 2.1 %); Xichang City (307 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 17.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class Low.

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.

CN · China · 2026-01-18 → 2026-01-21

Dechang County fire, 18 January 2026 德昌县 · Dechang County, Xichang City

Out · last detection 21 Jan 2026, 18:13 UTC

The fire started on 18 January 2026 in Dechang County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,070 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Sichuan Province since 2016 (of 97 with a page). Number 115 in China in 2026, of 983.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dechang County · 2016 Xichang City · 2024 Xichang City · 2022 Dechang County · 2023

Burnt area: 5,070ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 18 Jan 2026 – 21 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 18 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 89; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 4; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 170MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jan21 Jan

Play back 21 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jan 19 Jan 20 Jan 21 Jan

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

17°high

55km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,247 ha in 2016, 436 ha in 2017, 617 ha in 2020, 111 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,060 ha that had burned before.

1,183 ha Dechang County fire, January 2016 1,355 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Dechang County 德昌县 where it started

4,791 ha reached on 18 Jan

2.1 %
Xichang City 西昌市

307 ha reached on 20 Jan

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area2.7 ha

Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 700 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)
18 Jan	15.5 °C	30 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
19 Jan	17.0 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
20 Jan	14.1 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
21 Jan	12.8 °C	28 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
22 Jan after	11.2 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
23 Jan after	14.9 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 5
24 Jan after	15.2 °C	32 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
25 Jan after	14.9 °C	23 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
26 Jan after	12.9 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
27 Jan after	16.5 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
28 Jan after	17.2 °C	26 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
29 Jan after	16.2 °C	22 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
30 Jan after	12.9 °C	30 %	60 km/h	0.6 mm	Low 8
31 Jan after	13.7 °C	34 %	51 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 7
1 Feb after	14.5 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
2 Feb after	14.1 °C	26 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
3 Feb after	16.7 °C	21 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
4 Feb after	16.8 °C	21 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
5 Feb after	17.1 °C	15 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
6 Feb after	16.9 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
7 Feb after	14.5 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jan 2026

After · 28 Jan 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 21 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak51 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1053 µg/m³

Optical depth0.27

WHO 15

161718192021222324

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 · 89Every 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 China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dechang County fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2026 and 21 January 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 5,070 hectares (50.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dechang County (4,791 ha, 2.1 %); Xichang City (307 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 17.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 8, class Low.
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

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.

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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?

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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. 89 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.

Where it burned