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Nga fire, 22 March 2023 Nga

Out · last detection 15 Apr 2023, 06:58 UTC

The fire started on 22 March 2023 in Nga, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,617 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 16th largest in Oudomxay since 2016 (of 239 with a page). Number 27 in Laos in 2023, of 239.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nga · 2020Nga · 2018Nga · 2018Nga · 2016

Burnt area
9,617ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
22 Mar 2023 – 14 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
22 Mar
2023
Heat detections
379
in a single hotspot: 194 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
220MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Mar14 Apr
15 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

22 Mar 2023 · 25 MW · 6 23 Mar 2023 · 12 MW · 5 24 Mar 2023 · 167 MW · 7 25 Mar 2023 · 60 MW · 6 26 Mar 2023 · 321 MW · 28 28 Mar 2023 · 919 MW · 23 29 Mar 2023 · 295 MW · 13 30 Mar 2023 · 294 MW · 18 31 Mar 2023 · 238 MW · 13 1 Apr 2023 · 19 MW · 10 2 Apr 2023 · 303 MW · 12 3 Apr 2023 · 434 MW · 39 4 Apr 2023 · 295 MW · 40 5 Apr 2023 · 1,282 MW · 67 6 Apr 2023 · 25 MW · 14 7 Apr 2023 · 7 MW · 4 8 Apr 2023 · 9 MW · 2 9 Apr 2023 · 94 MW · 7 10 Apr 2023 · 77 MW · 9 11 Apr 2023 · 205 MW · 26 12 Apr 2023 · 18 MW · 12 13 Apr 2023 · 122 MW · 13 14 Apr 2023 · 14 MW · 2 15 Apr 2023 · 50 MW · 3
22 Mar 26 Mar 31 Mar 4 Apr 5 Apr 8 Apr 12 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 22 Apr.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 75 ha in 2016, 529 ha in 2017, 2,527 ha in 2018, 4,185 ha in 2020, 1,673 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,676 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.1% of the area of London (96 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. Nga where it started
    9,669 ha
    4.9 %

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 2025
Built-up area1.3 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.3 hectares of built-up land and about 300 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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
22 Mar 33.6 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
23 Mar 34.2 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
24 Mar 33.6 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Mar 33.6 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Mar 33.1 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
27 Mar 32.6 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Mar 31.6 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Mar 30.8 °C 49 % 36 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 4
30 Mar 31.3 °C 50 % 35 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 3
31 Mar 32.3 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
1 Apr 33.8 °C 38 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
2 Apr 34.4 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Apr 33.6 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Apr 34.1 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Apr 34.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Apr 34.1 °C 35 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
7 Apr 34.2 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Apr 32.1 °C 51 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
9 Apr 32.8 °C 53 % 39 km/h 1.6 mm Low 10
10 Apr 35.5 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Apr 36.3 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Apr 36.0 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Apr 36.0 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Apr 36.8 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Apr after 35.4 °C 40 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Apr after 35.0 °C 47 % 41 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
17 Apr after 35.0 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Apr after 37.7 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Apr after 37.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Apr after 37.6 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
21 Apr after 37.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Apr after 35.0 °C 39 % 37 km/h 4.7 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Mar 2023
After · 21 Apr 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 8 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 1,121 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 739: 49 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,121 µg/m³
Days over the guideline29 days
PM101,602 µg/m³
Optical depth7.83
2021222324252627282930311234567891011121314151617
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 379Every 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 Laos ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nga fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 March 2023 to 14 April 2023 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 March 2023 to 8 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,617 hectares (96.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nga (9,669 ha, 4.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
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

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 March 2023 to 8 April 2023. 379 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 2025, 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.