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LA · Laos · –

Park Ou fire, 23 March 2026 Park Ou, Nga

Out · last detection 15 Apr 2026, 18:43 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2026 in Park Ou, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,046 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 114 in Laos in 2026, of 308.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…
Burnt area
4,046ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
23 Mar 2026 – 14 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
23 Mar
2026
Heat detections
101
in a single hotspot: 209 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
80MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar14 Apr
15 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

23 Mar 2026 · 8 MW · 1 24 Mar 2026 · 33 MW · 2 25 Mar 2026 · 202 MW · 5 27 Mar 2026 · 42 MW · 4 28 Mar 2026 · 104 MW · 9 30 Mar 2026 · 6 MW · 2 31 Mar 2026 · 142 MW · 8 1 Apr 2026 · 181 MW · 16 2 Apr 2026 · 533 MW · 11 3 Apr 2026 · 191 MW · 7 5 Apr 2026 · 147 MW · 6 6 Apr 2026 · 4 MW · 1 7 Apr 2026 · 36 MW · 5 8 Apr 2026 · 16 MW · 4 9 Apr 2026 · 6 MW · 6 10 Apr 2026 · 16 MW · 4 11 Apr 2026 · 7 MW · 2 12 Apr 2026 · 2 MW · 1 13 Apr 2026 · 4 MW · 2 14 Apr 2026 · 6 MW · 4 15 Apr 2026 · 2 MW · 1
23 Mar 2 Apr 10 Apr 15 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

35°high
50km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 19 Apr.

This area had burned before

93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,641 ha in 2016, 1,465 ha in 2017, 2,388 ha in 2018, 3,968 ha in 2019, 1,841 ha in 2020, 2,577 ha in 2022, 1,140 ha in 2023, 2,529 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,748 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (40 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

  1. Park Ou where it started
    2,822 ha reached on 23 Mar
    3.2 %
  2. Nga
    1,246 ha reached on 25 Mar
    0.6 %

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 2025
Built-up area2.6 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.6 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
23 Mar 32.6 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
24 Mar 33.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
25 Mar 32.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Mar 33.7 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Mar 33.3 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
28 Mar 33.9 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
29 Mar 31.9 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
30 Mar 33.0 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
31 Mar 33.2 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Apr 32.7 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
2 Apr 32.3 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Apr 34.9 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Apr 34.3 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Apr 33.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Apr 33.7 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Apr 34.0 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
8 Apr 34.5 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Apr 34.3 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Apr 34.1 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Apr 33.8 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Apr 34.4 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Apr 35.3 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Apr 33.8 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Apr after 34.1 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Apr after 35.4 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Apr after 35.3 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Apr after 31.1 °C 49 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Apr after 29.5 °C 64 % 37 km/h 3.2 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Mar 2026
After · 21 Apr 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 14 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 213 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 123: 8.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak213 µg/m³
Days over the guideline28 days
PM10231 µg/m³
Optical depth2.63
21 Mar27 Mar2 Apr8 Apr14 Apr
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 101Every 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 Park Ou fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2026 to 14 April 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 March 2026 to 7 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,046 hectares (40.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Park Ou (2,822 ha, 3.2 %); Nga (1,246 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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

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

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 March 2026 to 7 April 2026. 101 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 2025, 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.