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Jixian County fire, 15 October 2017 集贤县 · Jixian County

Out · last measured on 30 Oct 2017

The fire started on 15 October 2017 in Jixian County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,975 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 124th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1846 with a page). Number 8 in China in 2017, of 243.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jixian County · 2016Jixian County · 2023Jixian County · 2016Sifangtai District · 2026

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
5,975ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
15 Oct 2017 – 30 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
15 Oct
2017
Danger at start
11
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

19°high
56km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 7 Nov.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,423 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Jixian County 集贤县 where it started
    5,964 ha
    2.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area18 ha
Residents≈ 950

Inside the perimeter there were about 18 hectares of built-up land and about 950 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
15 Oct 8.9 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
16 Oct 10.8 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
17 Oct 7.7 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 12
18 Oct 8.4 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
19 Oct 10.1 °C 36 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
20 Oct 11.0 °C 50 % 23 km/h 1.5 mm Very low 2
21 Oct 6.2 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 5
22 Oct 3.9 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
23 Oct 7.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
24 Oct 12.6 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
25 Oct 10.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
26 Oct 14.1 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
27 Oct 12.2 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
28 Oct 18.7 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
29 Oct 5.6 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Oct 5.8 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
31 Oct after 8.6 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
1 Nov after 8.4 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
2 Nov after 5.3 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Nov after -0.5 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
4 Nov after 1.4 °C 43 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
5 Nov after 8.6 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
6 Nov after 9.5 °C 50 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
7 Nov after 1.4 °C 68 % 19 km/h 6.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2017
After · 6 Nov 2017

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

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jixian County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2017 and 30 October 2017: 16 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 5,975 hectares (59.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jixian County (5,964 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 18.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, 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 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
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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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 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.