Dien Bien fire, 23 March 2026 Dien Bien, Sop Cop
The fire started on 23 March 2026 in Dien Bien, Vietnam, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,806 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Điện Biên since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 38 in Vietnam in 2026, of 99.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,806ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 23 Mar 2026 – 4 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 23 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 40
- in a single hotspot: 126 MW
- Average daily power
- 75MW
- 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
86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5 ha in 2016, 6 ha in 2019, 1,411 ha in 2020, 405 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,553 ha that had burned before.
- 1,167 ha Sop Cop fire, March 2020 2,302 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 405 ha Sop Cop fire, March 2025 1,256 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 244 ha Sop Cop fire, March 2020 2,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6 ha Dien Bien fire, April 2019 1,048 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5 ha Dien Bien fire, March 2016 1,075 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
-
Dien Bien where it started1,110 ha reached on 23 Mar0.7 %
-
693 ha reached on 24 Mar0.5 %
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 0.17 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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
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 1 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 83: 5.5 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 · 40Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,304 haPhonthong3 April 2026 · 16 days · 16 km away
- 8,294 haPhonthong27 March 2020 · 9 days · 18 km away
- 7,599 haPhonthong4 April 2026 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 5,537 haPhonthong4 April 2023 · 20 days · 20 km away
- 11,662 haXonMarch 2026 · 23 days · 26 km away
- 4,779 haXon7 March 2016 · 17 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dien Bien fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2026 to 4 April 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 March 2026 to 29 March 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,806 hectares (18.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dien Bien (1,110 ha, 0.7 %); Sop Cop (693 ha, 0.5 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Vietnam (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: 114 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 29 March 2026 → 4 April 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 March 2026 to 29 March 2026. 40 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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 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.