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Erdao District fire, 13 March 2026 二道区 · Jiutai District, Erdao District, Dehui City

Out · last detection 2 Apr 2026, 05:22 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2026 in Erdao District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,964 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

Number 16 in China in 2026, of 1101.

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.

Burnt area
18,964ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
13 Mar 2026 – 2 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
4
counties
Started on
13 Mar
2026
Heat detections
673
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
425MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar2 Apr
2 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 2026 · 2 MW · 1 14 Mar 2026 · 124 MW · 11 15 Mar 2026 · 6 MW · 1 16 Mar 2026 · 33 MW · 6 17 Mar 2026 · 61 MW · 8 20 Mar 2026 · 282 MW · 37 21 Mar 2026 · 249 MW · 28 23 Mar 2026 · 7 MW · 2 24 Mar 2026 · 390 MW · 38 25 Mar 2026 · 824 MW · 81 26 Mar 2026 · 189 MW · 21 27 Mar 2026 · 909 MW · 89 28 Mar 2026 · 2,612 MW · 213 30 Mar 2026 · 204 MW · 24 31 Mar 2026 · 213 MW · 32 1 Apr 2026 · 933 MW · 46 2 Apr 2026 · 196 MW · 35
13 Mar 17 Mar 24 Mar 28 Mar 2 Apr

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
58km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 25.4 mm on 3 Apr.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 428 ha in 2017, 1,258 ha in 2018, 169 ha in 2019, 2,104 ha in 2020, 2,861 ha in 2021, 3,628 ha in 2022, 975 ha in 2023, 627 ha in 2024, 2,880 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,477 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (190 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. Jiutai District 九台区
    15,243 ha reached on 14 Mar
    5.4 %
  2. Erdao District 二道区 where it started
    3,595 ha reached on 14 Mar
    3.6 %
  3. Dehui City 德惠市
    366 ha reached on 17 Mar
    0.1 %
  4. Kuancheng District 宽城区
    6 ha reached on 13 Mar
    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 area332 ha
Residents≈ 26,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 332 hectares of built-up land and about 26,000 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)
13 Mar 11.3 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
14 Mar 2.9 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
15 Mar 6.9 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
16 Mar 5.6 °C 12 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
17 Mar 12.7 °C 12 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Mar 0.7 °C 19 % 54 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 3
19 Mar 2.1 °C 22 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 5
20 Mar 1.7 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
21 Mar 13.0 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
22 Mar 10.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Low 8
23 Mar 12.9 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
24 Mar 16.6 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Mar 16.3 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
26 Mar 13.8 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 11
27 Mar 11.8 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
28 Mar 14.7 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
29 Mar 12.3 °C 33 % 58 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
30 Mar 11.4 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
31 Mar 13.6 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
1 Apr 9.0 °C 6 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Apr 14.6 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
3 Apr after 9.0 °C 38 % 50 km/h 25.4 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2026
After · 9 Apr 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 3 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 135 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak135 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10148 µg/m³
Optical depth2.07
18 Mar22 Mar26 Mar30 Mar3 Apr
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 · 673Every 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 Erdao District fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2026 to 2 April 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 March 2026 to 2 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,964 hectares (189.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Jiutai District (15,243 ha, 5.4 %); Erdao District (3,595 ha, 3.6 %); Dehui City (366 ha, 0.1 %); Kuancheng District (6 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 16.6 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 20 March 2026 → 13 March 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 March 2026 to 2 April 2026. 673 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.