How long did the Parklai fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 April 2019 to 28 April 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 April 2019 to 21 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,552 hectares (25.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Parklai (2,566 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 · 2019-04-08 → 2019-04-28

Parklai fire, 8 April 2019 Parklai

Out · last detection 27 Apr 2019, 06:23 UTC

The fire started on 8 April 2019 in Parklai, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,552 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 95th largest in Xaignabouli since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 77 in Laos in 2019, of 126.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parklai · 2018 Parklai · 2023 Xanakharm · 2026 Parklai · 2026

Burnt area: 2,552ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 8 Apr 2019 – 28 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 8 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 132; in a single hotspot: 193 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 238MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Apr28 Apr

Play back 27 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

8 Apr 12 Apr 15 Apr 17 Apr 19 Apr 21 Apr 27 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

40°high

37km/h · peak gust

34%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 6 May.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 621 ha in 2016, 832 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,043 ha that had burned before.

832 ha Parklai fire, April 2018 2,214 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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

Parklai where it started

2,566 ha reached on 8 Apr

1.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
12 Apr	38.6 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
13 Apr	38.5 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
14 Apr	39.4 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
15 Apr	38.3 °C	42 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 21
16 Apr	39.1 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
17 Apr	39.0 °C	44 %	28 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 12
18 Apr	39.3 °C	37 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Apr	40.2 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
20 Apr	40.4 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
21 Apr	39.7 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 25
22 Apr	38.2 °C	42 %	34 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 16
23 Apr	37.3 °C	41 %	30 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 20
24 Apr	39.1 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 20
25 Apr	38.3 °C	42 %	23 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 18
26 Apr	39.0 °C	39 %	19 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 14
27 Apr	38.3 °C	39 %	30 km/h	6.4 mm	Low 6
28 Apr	36.3 °C	45 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 16
29 Apr after	38.8 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
30 Apr after	38.7 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 May after	38.5 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
2 May after	39.1 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 May after	38.9 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
4 May after	37.5 °C	47 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 May after	38.2 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 21
6 May after	36.9 °C	50 %	29 km/h	2.3 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Apr 2019

After · 5 May 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 · 132Every 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 Parklai fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 April 2019 to 28 April 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 April 2019 to 21 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,552 hectares (25.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Parklai (2,566 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Start date: 12 April 2019 → 8 April 2019.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 April 2019 to 21 April 2019. 132 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