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PK · Pakistan · –

Jhang fire, October 2026 Jhang, Lalian

Dying down · last detection 8 Nov 2026, 08:43 UTC

The fire started on 26 October 2026 in Jhang, Pakistan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,024 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 30 in Pakistan in 2026, of 31.

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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Is it still active?

No detections since 8 Nov 2026, 08:43 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
1,024ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
26 Oct 2026 – 8 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
26 Oct
2026
Heat detections
21
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Average daily power
15MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Oct8 Nov
8 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

28 Oct 2026 · 8 MW · 1 29 Oct 2026 · 7 MW · 2 30 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 31 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 2 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 3 Nov 2026 · 8 MW · 2 4 Nov 2026 · 6 MW · 3 5 Nov 2026 · 48 MW · 5 6 Nov 2026 · 13 MW · 3 7 Nov 2026 · 2 MW · 1 8 Nov 2026 · 25 MW · 4
28 Oct 31 Oct 5 Nov

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

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 87 ha in 2023, 69 ha in 2024, 398 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 413 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (10 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. Jhang where it started
    1,025 ha reached on 28 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. 4 ha reached on 28 Oct
    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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Oct 2026
After · 8 Nov 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 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 203 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 122: 8.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak203 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10229 µg/m³
Optical depth1.16
24 Oct28 Oct1 Nov5 Nov
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 · 21Every 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 Pakistan

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jhang fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 October 2026 to 8 November 2026 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2026 to 8 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,024 hectares (10.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jhang (1,025 ha, 0.4 %); Lalian (4 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Jhang fire still active?
No fire detections since 8 Nov 2026, 08:43 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Pakistan (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: 1122 · 16 · 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 9 November 2026.
  1. Page published (1,024 ha).

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 1122 · 16.

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 2 November 2026 to 8 November 2026. 21 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.

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.