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Nong'an County fire, October 2017 农安县 · Nong'an County, Dehui City

Out · last measured on 20 Oct 2017

The fire started on 15 October 2017 in Nong'an County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,362 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 510th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 807 with a page). Number 137 in China in 2017, of 243.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nong'an County · 2020Nong'an County · 2025Dehui City · 2025Dehui City · 2026

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
1,362ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
15 Oct 2017 – 20 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
15 Oct
2017
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

17°high
58km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 246 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 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. Nong'an County 农安县 where it started
    1,196 ha
    0.2 %
  2. Dehui City 德惠市
    168 ha
    0.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.38 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
15 Oct 12.5 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm Low 10
16 Oct 11.6 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
17 Oct 8.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
18 Oct 13.6 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Oct 14.9 °C 30 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Oct 16.8 °C 28 % 58 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
21 Oct after 7.0 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
22 Oct after 7.5 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Oct after 9.1 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Oct after 14.9 °C 9 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Oct after 15.8 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Oct after 16.5 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Oct after 17.7 °C 44 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Oct after 14.0 °C 27 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Oct after 5.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Oct after 10.2 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2017
After · 27 Oct 2017

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Nong'an County fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 October 2017 and 20 October 2017: 6 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 1,362 hectares (13.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Nong'an County (1,196 ha, 0.2 %); Dehui City (168 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 16.8 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, 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 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.

Report an error
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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 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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 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.