How long did the Paktha fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 March 2019 to 22 April 2019 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2019 to 17 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,680 hectares (126.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Xienghone (12,723 ha, 11 %); Khop (23 ha, 0.0 %); Pakbeng (9 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 2019-03-21 → 2019-04-22

Paktha fire, March 2019 Xienghone, Khop, Pakbeng

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2019, 06:17 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2019 in Paktha, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,680 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Bokeo since 2016 (of 73 with a page). Number 3 in Laos in 2019, of 126.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Paktha · 2016 Xienghone · 2016 Xienghone · 2016 Khop · 2023

Burnt area: 12,680ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 33days; 21 Mar 2019 – 22 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 21 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 655; in a single hotspot: 308 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 315MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar22 Apr

Play back 22 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

21 Mar 27 Mar 30 Mar 1 Apr 6 Apr 11 Apr 16 Apr 22 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

40km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,990 ha in 2016, 819 ha in 2017, 515 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,692 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8% of the area of London (127 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

Xienghone

12,723 ha

11 %
Khop

23 ha

0.0 %
Pakbeng

9 ha

0.0 %

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 area2.7 ha

Residents≈ 1,600

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 1,600 residents (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)
26 Mar	33.7 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
27 Mar	32.7 °C	43 %	36 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18
28 Mar	32.3 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Mar	32.8 °C	26 %	29 km/h	3.2 mm	Moderate 12
30 Mar	32.8 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 Mar	33.5 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
1 Apr	33.9 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
2 Apr	33.0 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
3 Apr	32.5 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27
4 Apr	34.0 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Apr	32.7 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
6 Apr	33.0 °C	40 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
7 Apr	33.7 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Apr	35.2 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Apr	35.2 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Apr	35.3 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Apr	35.7 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Apr	35.7 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Apr	35.9 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Apr	36.3 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Apr	37.3 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Apr	35.8 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Apr	36.0 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Apr	36.3 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Apr	37.0 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Apr	37.2 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
21 Apr	35.9 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Apr	35.4 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
23 Apr after	33.4 °C	45 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
24 Apr after	35.1 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.2 mm	High 29
25 Apr after	34.9 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Apr after	35.7 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Apr after	33.7 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Mar 2019

After · 29 Apr 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 · 655Every 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 Paktha fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 March 2019 to 22 April 2019 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2019 to 17 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,680 hectares (126.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Xienghone (12,723 ha, 11 %); Khop (23 ha, 0.0 %); Pakbeng (9 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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

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 26 March 2019 to 17 April 2019. 655 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