Lanxi County fire, October 2026 兰西县 · Lanxi County
The fire started on 23 October 2026 in Lanxi County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,960 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 160th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1841 with a page). Number 117 in China in 2026, of 972.
The power measured by the satellite is low (15.0 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?
Satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 04:49 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. 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
- 4,960ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 23 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 23 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 78
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Danger at start
- 12
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 120MW
- 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 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2016, 127 ha in 2017, 231 ha in 2021, 1,600 ha in 2022, 21 ha in 2023, 1,405 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,758 ha that had burned before.
- 1,017 ha Lanxi County fire, October 2022 1,716 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 667 ha Lanxi County fire, October 2025 1,450 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 231 ha Lanxi County fire, April 2021 1,125 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).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
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).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
4,952 ha reached on 23 Oct2.0 %
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.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Oct | 15.5 °C | 47 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 24 Oct | 12.1 °C | 21 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 25 Oct | 11.4 °C | 24 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 26 Oct | 8.3 °C | 33 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 25 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 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 · 78Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,990 haLanxi County 兰西县12 March 2026 · 17 days · 11 km away
- 8,705 haHulan District 呼兰区 23 October 2026 · 5 days · 12 km away
- 7,460 haLanxi County 兰西县13 March 2026 · 21 days · 16 km away
- 13,093 haHulan District 呼兰区31 October 2017 · 7 days · 19 km away
- 11,840 haHulan District 呼兰区29 October 2017 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 7,497 haHulan District 呼兰区27 March 2023 · 7 days · 24 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lanxi County fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 October 2026 to 26 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,960 hectares (49.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lanxi County (4,952 ha, 2.0 %).
- Is the Lanxi County fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 27 Oct 2026, 04:49 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 15.5 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 26 October 2026.
- Page published (4,740 ha).
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 23 October 2026 to 26 October 2026. 78 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
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.