How long did the Khon Sawan fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 March 2019 to 16 March 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2019 to 14 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,561 hectares (115.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Mueang Chaiyaphum (5,979 ha, 4.2 %); Kaeng Khro (4,054 ha, 6.2 %); Khon Sawan (1,593 ha, 3.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

TH · Thailand · 2019-03-03 → 2019-03-16

Khon Sawan fire, March 2019 คอนสวรรค์ · Mueang Chaiyaphum, Kaeng Khro, Khon Sawan

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2019, 18:42 UTC

The fire started on 3 March 2019 in Khon Sawan, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,561 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Chaiyaphum Province since 2016 (of 123 with a page). Number 8 in Thailand in 2019, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mueang Chaiyaphum · 2016 Kaeng Khro · 2016 Mueang Chaiyaphum · 2026 Phu Khiao · 2026

Burnt area: 11,561ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 3 Mar 2019 – 16 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 3 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 486; in a single hotspot: 160 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 297MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Mar16 Mar

Play back 16 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Mar 4 Mar 5 Mar 7 Mar 9 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar 16 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

42km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 25 Mar.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,829 ha in 2016, 143 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (116 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

Mueang Chaiyaphum เมืองชัยภูมิ

5,979 ha reached on 3 Mar

4.2 %
Kaeng Khro แก้งคร้อ

4,054 ha reached on 3 Mar

6.2 %
Khon Sawan คอนสวรรค์ where it started

1,593 ha reached on 3 Mar

3.4 %

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 2020

Built-up area6.3 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.3 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
3 Mar	31.9 °C	48 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
4 Mar	31.7 °C	43 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
5 Mar	32.8 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Mar	33.6 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Mar	32.8 °C	40 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 Mar	33.2 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
9 Mar	33.3 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Mar	32.9 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Mar	33.7 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Mar	34.0 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Mar	33.8 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Mar	33.7 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Mar	34.2 °C	36 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Mar	30.9 °C	52 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
17 Mar after	33.7 °C	38 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
18 Mar after	33.9 °C	40 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
19 Mar after	33.7 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
20 Mar after	33.6 °C	44 %	33 km/h	0.3 mm	High 27
21 Mar after	34.7 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Mar after	35.4 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Mar after	36.2 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
24 Mar after	33.7 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.8 mm	High 23
25 Mar after	30.4 °C	53 %	26 km/h	4.3 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Feb 2019

After · 23 Mar 2019

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.

Detections table · 486Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Khon Sawan fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 March 2019 to 16 March 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2019 to 14 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,561 hectares (115.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Mueang Chaiyaphum (5,979 ha, 4.2 %); Kaeng Khro (4,054 ha, 6.2 %); Khon Sawan (1,593 ha, 3.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 14 March 2019 → 16 March 2019.

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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 199 · 191.

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 3 March 2019 to 14 March 2019. 486 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 2020, 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