How long did the Fang fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 May 2024 and 4 May 2024: 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 1,088 hectares (10.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Fang (1,093 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TH · Thailand · 2024-05-01 → 2024-05-04

Fang fire, May 2024 ฝาง · Fang

Out · last detection 4 May 2024, 06:37 UTC

The fire started on 1 May 2024 in Fang, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,088 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 346th largest in Chiang Mai Province since 2016 (of 399 with a page). Number 245 in Thailand in 2024, of 277.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mae Suai · 2019 Mae Suai · 2016 Phrao · 2026 Mae Suai · 2026

Burnt area: 1,088ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 1 May 2024 – 4 May 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 1 May; 2024
Heat detections: 35; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 97MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 May4 May

Play back 4 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

1 May 3 May 4 May

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

35km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 8 May.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 282 ha in 2016, 771 ha in 2019, 114 ha in 2020, 373 ha in 2022, 511 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,011 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

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

Fang ฝาง where it started

1,093 ha

1.3 %

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.

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)
1 May	41.1 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 May	39.4 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 May	38.0 °C	30 %	35 km/h	2.6 mm	High 24
4 May	38.9 °C	25 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 May after	38.3 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.5 mm	High 35
6 May after	39.0 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 May after	35.8 °C	33 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 May after	33.2 °C	49 %	27 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Apr 2024

After · 11 May 2024

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 7 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 47: 3.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak76 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM10116 µg/m³

Optical depth1.71

WHO 15

29301234567

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 · 35Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Fang fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 May 2024 and 4 May 2024: 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 1,088 hectares (10.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Fang (1,093 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · 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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 199 · 191.

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. 35 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.

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 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.

Where it burned