Fuyuan fire, March 2019 抚远市 · Fuyuan
The fire started on 20 March 2019 in Fuyuan, China, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,239 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 1253th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1765 with a page). Number 119 in China in 2019, of 185.
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 1,239ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 1day
- 20 Mar 2019 – 20 Mar 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2019
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 21 Mar.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
1,246 ha0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Mar | -0.2 °C | 45 % | 49 km/h | 1.5 mm | Very low 2 |
| 21 Mar after | -3.6 °C | 47 % | 52 km/h | 3.2 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.
Other fires nearby
- 7,753 haSmidovichsky District30 April 2026 · 5 days · 20 km away
- 7,790 haSmidovichsky District27 April 2018 · 2 days · 22 km away
- 6,881 haSmidovichsky District26 October 2016 · 5 days · 23 km away
- 5,457 haSmidovichsky District30 March 2023 · 3 days · 26 km away
- 7,025 haSmidovichsky DistrictOctober 2017 · 7 days · 27 km away
- 5,033 haSmidovichsky District7 March 2019 · 2 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Fuyuan fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 March 2019 and 20 March 2019: 1 day 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 1,239 hectares (12.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Fuyuan (1,246 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached -0.2 °C, humidity dropped to 45 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very 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
Satellite cross-check
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
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.