How long did the Nong fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2019 to 14 March 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 February 2019 to 13 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,519 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nong (2,416 ha, 1.3 %); Phine (1,123 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.

LA · Laos · 2019-02-28 → 2019-03-14

Nong fire, 28 February 2019 Nong, Phine

Out · last detection 14 Mar 2019, 06:48 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2019 in Nong, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,519 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in Savannakhet since 2016 (of 95 with a page). Number 42 in Laos in 2019, of 126.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nong · 2017 Nong · 2018 Nong · 2016 Nong · 2026

Burnt area: 3,519ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 28 Feb 2019 – 14 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 28 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 130; in a single hotspot: 229 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 271MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb14 Mar

Play back 14 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Feb 3 Mar 5 Mar 7 Mar 9 Mar 10 Mar 11 Mar 13 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

37°high

44km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 24 Mar.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 569 ha in 2016, 2,499 ha in 2017, 2,631 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,174 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Nong where it started

2,416 ha

1.3 %
Phine

1,123 ha

0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
28 Feb	34.7 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 25
1 Mar	36.8 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Mar	35.4 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Mar	33.6 °C	42 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Mar	33.6 °C	43 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
5 Mar	33.2 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
6 Mar	34.9 °C	40 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Mar	36.0 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Mar	34.6 °C	32 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Mar	35.1 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Mar	34.7 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
11 Mar	33.4 °C	40 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Mar	33.4 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
13 Mar	34.4 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Mar	34.2 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
15 Mar after	32.2 °C	51 %	43 km/h	0.6 mm	High 26
16 Mar after	32.6 °C	49 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Mar after	33.2 °C	43 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Mar after	35.2 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
19 Mar after	35.8 °C	34 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
20 Mar after	35.3 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Mar after	36.8 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Mar after	35.7 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
23 Mar after	36.3 °C	39 %	38 km/h	0.3 mm	High 34
24 Mar after	28.3 °C	64 %	38 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Feb 2019

After · 21 Mar 2019

Before After

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 · 130Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Laos ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nong fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2019 to 14 March 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 February 2019 to 13 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,519 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nong (2,416 ha, 1.3 %); Phine (1,123 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 February 2019 to 13 March 2019. 130 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.

Where it burned