Luobei County fire, 22 October 2026 萝北县 · Luobei County, Suibin County
The fire started on 22 October 2026 in Luobei County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,755 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 27th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1846 with a page). Number 23 in China in 2026, of 983.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 14,755ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 22 Oct 2026 – 25 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 22 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 216
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 371MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 27 Oct.
This area had burned before
0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2025.
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
-
11,110 ha reached on 22 Oct1.7 %
-
Suibin County 绥滨县3,523 ha reached on 23 Oct1.1 %
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 32 hectares of built-up land and about 600 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Oct | 9.4 °C | 33 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 23 Oct | 14.3 °C | 39 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 24 Oct | 13.0 °C | 30 % | 55 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 25 Oct | 9.1 °C | 23 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 26 Oct after | 8.8 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 11 |
| 27 Oct after | 2.1 °C | 51 % | 45 km/h | 3.7 mm | Very low 0 |
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 20 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 31 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 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 · 216Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,237 haHuachuan County 桦川县24 October 2025 · 6 days · 19 km away
- 7,156 haHuachuan County 桦川县 22 October 2026 · 5 days · 19 km away
- 3,096 haSuibin County 绥滨县 23 October 2026 · 3 days · 24 km away
- 3,164 haHuachuan County 桦川县 22 October 2026 · 5 days · 27 km away
- 4,409 haHuachuan County 桦川县 22 October 2026 · 5 days · 28 km away
- 6,341 haJixian County 集贤县1 November 2016 · 10 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Luobei County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 October 2026 and 25 October 2026: 4 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 14,755 hectares (147.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Luobei County (11,110 ha, 1.7 %); Suibin County (3,523 ha, 1.1 %).
- Is the Luobei County fire still active?
- No fire detections since 25 Oct 2026, 04:44 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 14.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 25 October 2026.
- Area: 1,540 → 14,755 ha.
- The page “Suibin County, 23 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
- The page “Luobei County, 22 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
- Page published (1,540 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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 216 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.
- 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 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.