How long did the Pang Mapha fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2016 to 7 April 2016 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 March 2016 to 1 April 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,222 hectares (62.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pang Mapha (6,200 ha, 5.6 %); Mueang Mae Hong Son (55 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

TH · Thailand · 2016-03-15 → 2016-04-07

Pang Mapha fire, 15 March 2016 ปางมะผ้า · Pang Mapha, Mueang Mae Hong Son

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2016, 06:31 UTC

The fire started on 15 March 2016 in Pang Mapha, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,222 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Mae Hong Son Province since 2016 (of 386 with a page). Number 16 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pang Mapha · 2026 Pang Mapha · 2024

Burnt area: 6,222ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 15 Mar 2016 – 7 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 15 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 263; in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 45MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Mar7 Apr

Play back 7 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

15 Mar 22 Mar 25 Mar 27 Mar 28 Mar 31 Mar 4 Apr 7 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

38°high

45km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 9 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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

Pang Mapha ปางมะผ้า where it started

6,200 ha reached on 15 Mar

5.6 %
Mueang Mae Hong Son เมืองแม่ฮ่องสอน

55 ha reached on 21 Mar

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 2015

Built-up area1.5 ha

Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.5 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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 Mar	36.9 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Mar	36.9 °C	31 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
17 Mar	37.1 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Mar	36.6 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Mar	36.9 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Mar	37.4 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Mar	37.7 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Mar	37.2 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar	37.7 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar	37.4 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Mar	38.2 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Mar	36.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Mar	36.8 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
28 Mar	36.5 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Mar	35.9 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Mar	34.9 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Mar	37.8 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
1 Apr	36.0 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Apr	35.7 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Apr	37.6 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
4 Apr	37.8 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
5 Apr	38.3 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Apr	38.2 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Apr	39.2 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
8 Apr after	38.5 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Apr after	38.6 °C	35 %	43 km/h	1.6 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Mar 2016

After · 14 Apr 2016

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 · 263Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pang Mapha fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2016 to 7 April 2016 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 March 2016 to 1 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,222 hectares (62.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pang Mapha (6,200 ha, 5.6 %); Mueang Mae Hong Son (55 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 1 April 2016 → 7 April 2016.
26 October 2026 Start date: 20 March 2016 → 15 March 2016.

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

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 199 · 191.

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 20 March 2016 to 1 April 2016. 263 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 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