How long did the Home fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2026 to 20 April 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2026 to 17 April 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,541 hectares (85.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Home (5,132 ha, 4.0 %); Anouvong (3,457 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

LA · Laos · 2026-03-25 → 2026-04-20

Home fire, 25 March 2026 Home, Anouvong

Out · last detection 20 Apr 2026, 06:19 UTC

The fire started on 25 March 2026 in Home, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Xaisomboun since 2016 (of 28 with a page). Number 50 in Laos in 2026, of 308.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Home · 2026 Bolikhanh · 2026 Longsane · 2026 Longcheng · 2026

Burnt area: 8,541ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 25 Mar 2026 – 20 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 25 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 360; in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start: 0; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 94MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Mar20 Apr

Play back 20 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Mar 30 Mar 4 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 12 Apr 16 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

35°high

47km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 21 Apr.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 184 ha in 2018, 209 ha in 2020, 1,389 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (85 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

Home where it started

5,132 ha reached on 26 Mar

4.0 %
Anouvong

3,457 ha reached on 27 Mar

1.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.00 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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)
25 Mar	30.2 °C	59 %	32 km/h	4.4 mm	Very low 0
26 Mar	31.3 °C	52 %	31 km/h	1.8 mm	Very low 1
27 Mar	31.6 °C	48 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Very low 4
28 Mar	31.9 °C	49 %	31 km/h	2.1 mm	Very low 1
29 Mar	30.7 °C	49 %	41 km/h	7.8 mm	Very low 0
30 Mar	29.3 °C	57 %	41 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 2
31 Mar	31.5 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 5
1 Apr	30.4 °C	52 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 5
2 Apr	31.7 °C	48 %	31 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 7
3 Apr	31.8 °C	48 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 8
4 Apr	31.0 °C	50 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 9
5 Apr	31.4 °C	49 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
6 Apr	32.9 °C	44 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 11
7 Apr	33.4 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 12
8 Apr	34.3 °C	33 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
9 Apr	34.7 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
10 Apr	34.6 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
11 Apr	34.3 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Apr	34.2 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Apr	34.5 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
14 Apr	34.7 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
15 Apr	34.9 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
16 Apr	35.1 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
17 Apr	33.1 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
18 Apr	29.1 °C	60 %	28 km/h	4.8 mm	Very low 2
19 Apr	26.3 °C	75 %	33 km/h	19.0 mm	Very low 0
20 Apr	29.0 °C	63 %	35 km/h	3.6 mm	Very low 0
21 Apr after	30.8 °C	60 %	32 km/h	2.7 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Mar 2026

After · 27 Apr 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 12 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 364 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 256: 17 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak364 µg/m³

Days over the guideline32 days

PM10385 µg/m³

Optical depth3.38

WHO 15

2324252627282930311234567891011121314151617181920212223

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 · 360Every 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 Laos ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Home fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2026 to 20 April 2026 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2026 to 17 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,541 hectares (85.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Home (5,132 ha, 4.0 %); Anouvong (3,457 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Laos (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.

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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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 27 March 2026 to 17 April 2026. 360 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 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