Mad fire, 20 March 2025 Mad, Xanakharm
The fire started on 20 March 2025 in Mad, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,022 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 72th largest in Vientiane since 2016 (of 74 with a page). Number 48 in Laos in 2025, of 51.
- Burnt area
- 2,022ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 20 Mar 2025 – 31 Mar 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 20 Mar
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 69
- in a single hotspot: 309 MW
- Energy released
- 2.7GW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 697 ha in 2017, 210 ha in 2019, 1,074 ha in 2020, 1,061 ha in 2023, 266 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,939 ha that had burned before.
- 1,074 ha Mad fire, March 2020 2,049 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 892 ha Xanakharm fire, March 2023 34,889 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 697 ha Xanakharm fire, April 2017 5,134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Mad where it started1,576 ha reached on 20 Mar1.0 %
-
455 ha reached on 23 Mar0.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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 24 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 198 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 134: 8.9 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 · 69Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 24,416 haXanakharmMarch 2026 · 37 days · 10 km away
- 14,010 haParklai15 March 2023 · 36 days · 15 km away
- 34,889 haXanakharmMarch 2023 · 39 days · 27 km away
- 23,748 haChiang Khan28 March 2026 · 22 days · 29 km away
- 44,232 haParklai14 March 2026 · 43 days · 33 km away
- 18,466 haPhiang3 April 2016 · 22 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mad fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 20 March 2025 to 31 March 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 March 2025 to 25 March 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,022 hectares (20.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mad (1,576 ha, 1.0 %); Xanakharm (455 ha, 0.2 %).
- 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
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
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.