Kham fire, 15 March 2026 Kham, Pek, Phookood
The fire started on 15 March 2026 in Kham, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,571 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.
It is the 4th largest in Xiangkhouang since 2016 (of 109 with a page). Number 24 in Laos in 2026, of 308.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Pek · 2023Kham · 2016Kham · 2020Phookood · 2025
- Burnt area
- 13,571ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 29days
- 15 Mar 2026 – 12 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 4
- districts
- Started on
- 15 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 542
- in a single hotspot: 178 MW
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 287MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,893 ha in 2016, 2,627 ha in 2017, 834 ha in 2018, 2,137 ha in 2019, 1,923 ha in 2020, 1,691 ha in 2021, 1,363 ha in 2022, 7,612 ha in 2023, 347 ha in 2024, 3,089 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,055 ha that had burned before.
- 6,607 ha Pek fire, March 2023 23,228 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,921 ha Kham fire, April 2016 2,225 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,522 ha Kham fire, March 2020 4,762 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,415 ha Phookood fire, March 2025 11,637 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,234 ha Kham fire, March 2019 2,729 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 821 ha Kham fire, April 2022 2,942 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 542 ha Phookood fire, April 2022 3,337 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 318 ha Kham fire, March 2025 2,827 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
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).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kham where it started11,438 ha5.4 %
-
1,147 ha0.9 %
-
887 ha0.4 %
-
175 ha0.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 1,500 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Mar | 26.5 °C | 63 % | 24 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very low 1 |
| 17 Mar | 28.4 °C | 56 % | 34 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very low 2 |
| 18 Mar | 29.3 °C | 54 % | 26 km/h | 0.6 mm | Very low 4 |
| 19 Mar | 30.4 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 7 |
| 20 Mar | 30.8 °C | 56 % | 29 km/h | 0.4 mm | Low 7 |
| 21 Mar | 30.7 °C | 56 % | 24 km/h | 1.4 mm | Very low 3 |
| 22 Mar | 29.4 °C | 61 % | 34 km/h | 4.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 23 Mar | 31.7 °C | 45 % | 37 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very low 5 |
| 24 Mar | 32.7 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 25 Mar | 31.6 °C | 55 % | 36 km/h | 5.3 mm | Very low 1 |
| 26 Mar | 33.0 °C | 43 % | 39 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 7 |
| 27 Mar | 32.9 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 28 Mar | 32.6 °C | 45 % | 36 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 11 |
| 29 Mar | 32.0 °C | 44 % | 50 km/h | 1.7 mm | Low 8 |
| 30 Mar | 30.6 °C | 50 % | 49 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 10 |
| 31 Mar | 31.8 °C | 45 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 Apr | 31.5 °C | 50 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 11 |
| 2 Apr | 31.9 °C | 48 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 3 Apr | 33.4 °C | 43 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 4 Apr | 32.3 °C | 45 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 5 Apr | 31.7 °C | 49 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 6 Apr | 33.3 °C | 46 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 7 Apr | 33.1 °C | 45 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 8 Apr | 35.2 °C | 31 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 9 Apr | 35.3 °C | 29 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 10 Apr | 34.5 °C | 31 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 11 Apr | 34.4 °C | 35 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Apr | 34.7 °C | 35 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 13 Apr after | 35.1 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 14 Apr after | 33.5 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 15 Apr after | 34.6 °C | 37 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 199 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 112: 7.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 542Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kham fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2026 to 12 April 2026 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 March 2026 to 5 April 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,571 hectares (135.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 4 municipalities: Kham (11,438 ha, 5.4 %); Pek (1,147 ha, 0.9 %); Phookood (887 ha, 0.4 %); Hiem (175 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 40 % and gusts hit 51 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 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
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.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 March 2026 to 5 April 2026. 542 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.
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.