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Pak Xeng fire, 11 April 2018 Pak Xeng, Park Ou

Out · last detection 14 Apr 2018, 06:11 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2018 in Pak Xeng, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,073 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 269th largest in Luang Prabang since 2016 (of 293 with a page). Number 83 in Laos in 2018, of 87.

Burnt area
2,073ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
11 Apr 2018 – 14 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
11 Apr
2018
Heat detections
55
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Energy released
701MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Apr 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr14 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

11121314

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

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 624 ha in 2016, 151 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Pak Xeng where it started
    1,449 ha reached on 11 Apr
    0.9 %
  2. Park Ou
    632 ha reached on 11 Apr
    0.7 %

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.

Before · 4 Apr 2018
After · 21 Apr 2018

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 · 55Every 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 Pak Xeng fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 April 2018 and 14 April 2018: 4 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 2,073 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pak Xeng (1,449 ha, 0.9 %); Park Ou (632 ha, 0.7 %).
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.

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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.