How long did the Park Ou fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 March 2016 to 15 April 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2016 to 8 April 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,628 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Park Ou (2,856 ha, 3.2 %); Nga (1,797 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 44 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 · 2016-03-31 → 2016-04-15

Park Ou fire, 31 March 2016 Park Ou, Nga

Out · last detection 15 Apr 2016, 05:41 UTC

The fire started on 31 March 2016 in Park Ou, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,628 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 62th largest in Luang Prabang since 2016 (of 295 with a page). Number 29 in Laos in 2016, of 156.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nga · 2018 Park Ou · 2024 Nambak · 2026 Park Ou · 2020

Burnt area: 4,628ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 31 Mar 2016 – 15 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 31 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 164; in a single hotspot: 272 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 550MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Mar15 Apr

Play back 15 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

31 Mar 3 Apr 5 Apr 7 Apr 10 Apr 13 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

44km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 18 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 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Park Ou where it started

2,856 ha reached on 31 Mar

3.2 %
Nga

1,797 ha reached on 1 Apr

0.9 %

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.

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)
31 Mar	31.8 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 18
1 Apr	32.3 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
2 Apr	30.6 °C	50 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
3 Apr	32.2 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
4 Apr	34.8 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Apr	34.7 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Apr	34.7 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Apr	35.6 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
8 Apr	34.0 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Apr	33.1 °C	50 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 15
10 Apr	36.3 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Apr	37.4 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Apr	37.2 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Apr	35.7 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 Apr	37.0 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Apr	36.9 °C	29 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Apr after	36.2 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
17 Apr after	35.5 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Apr after	34.8 °C	44 %	35 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Mar 2016

After · 22 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 · 164Every 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 Park Ou fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 March 2016 to 15 April 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2016 to 8 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,628 hectares (46.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Park Ou (2,856 ha, 3.2 %); Nga (1,797 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 44 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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What really happened?

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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 1 April 2016 to 8 April 2016. 164 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.

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