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VN · Vietnam · –

Nam Tra My fire, March 2019 Nam Tra My

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2019, 06:03 UTC

The fire started on 18 March 2019 in Nam Tra My, Vietnam, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,034 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 31 in Vietnam in 2019, of 35.

Burnt area
1,034ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
18 Mar 2019 – 27 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
18 Mar
2019
Heat detections
25
in a single hotspot: 254 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
121MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Mar27 Mar
27 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

18 Mar 2019 · 330 MW · 3 19 Mar 2019 · 52 MW · 5 21 Mar 2019 · 47 MW · 3 23 Mar 2019 · 173 MW · 13 27 Mar 2019 · 4 MW · 1
18 Mar 19 Mar 21 Mar 23 Mar 27 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

33°high
35km/h · peak gust
47%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.7 mm on 29 Mar.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 547 ha in 2016, 630 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 837 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (10 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

  1. Nam Tra My where it started
    1,040 ha reached on 18 Mar
    1.2 %

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 area0.91 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.91 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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)
18 Mar 31.0 °C 48 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
19 Mar 31.3 °C 47 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
20 Mar 31.9 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
21 Mar 32.9 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
22 Mar 33.2 °C 51 % 25 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 15
23 Mar 31.3 °C 51 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
24 Mar 29.3 °C 72 % 35 km/h 19.7 mm Low 7
25 Mar 27.1 °C 72 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 0
26 Mar 28.8 °C 61 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 3
27 Mar 31.4 °C 55 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
28 Mar after 32.1 °C 54 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
29 Mar after 31.0 °C 60 % 23 km/h 6.7 mm Low 10

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 8.1, a minimum humidity of 48% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.

FWI at the start 8.1
Minimum humidity 48 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Huong Hoa fire, April 2018
1,241 ha 6 days FWI 8.7 Min. humidity 51 % 237 km away, in 2018

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 11.4 mm on 25 Apr.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

6.7 mmfirst rain
29 Mar2 days after it ended
35km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 27 Mar, and on 29 Mar 6.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Mar 2019
After · 3 Apr 2019

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 · 25Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Vietnam

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nam Tra My fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 March 2019 to 27 March 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 March 2019 to 23 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,034 hectares (10.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nam Tra My (1,040 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 47 % and gusts hit 35 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 Vietnam (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: 114 · 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 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 March 2019 → 27 March 2019.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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?

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 114.

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 18 March 2019 to 23 March 2019. 25 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.