Pak Xeng fire, April 2025 Pak Xeng
The fire started on 10 April 2025 in Pak Xeng, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,143 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 255th largest in Luang Prabang since 2016 (of 293 with a page). Number 41 in Laos in 2025, of 51.
- Burnt area
- 2,143ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 10 Apr 2025 – 11 Apr 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 10 Apr
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 58
- in a single hotspot: 53 MW
- Energy released
- 641MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,067 ha in 2016, 3 ha in 2017, 38 ha in 2018, 986 ha in 2019, 1,427 ha in 2020, 38 ha in 2021, 472 ha in 2022, 1,668 ha in 2023, 723 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,059 ha that had burned before.
- 1,668 ha Pak Xeng fire, March 2023 30,865 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,427 ha Park Ou fire, March 2020 35,409 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 532 ha Park Ou fire, March 2024 14,236 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 38 ha Pak Xeng fire, April 2018 6,404 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 38 ha Park Ou fire, March 2021 5,049 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Pak Xeng where it started2,153 ha reached on 10 Apr1.3 %
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.
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 · CopernicusOn 14 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 167 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 106: 7.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 58Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 30,865 haPak XengMarch 2023 · 26 days · 5 km away
- 14,236 haPark Ou26 March 2024 · 21 days · 9 km away
- 35,409 haPark Ou9 March 2020 · 29 days · 15 km away
- 15,019 haNgoi25 March 2023 · 32 days · 21 km away
- 56,191 haPark Ou22 March 2026 · 32 days · 28 km away
- 19,543 haPak Xeng3 April 2023 · 27 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Pak Xeng fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 April 2025 and 11 April 2025: 2 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 2,143 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Pak Xeng (2,153 ha, 1.3 %).
- 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.
Report an error
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.