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Pekan fire, 8 July 2018 Pekan

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2018, 06:31 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2018 in Pekan, Malaysia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,316 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Pahang since 2016 (of 107 with a page). Number 3 in Malaysia in 2018, of 29.

Burnt area
2,316ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
8 Jul 2018 – 23 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Jul
2018
Heat detections
321
in a single hotspot: 158 MW
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
3.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Jul 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul23 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

8121314151617181920212223

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high
39km/h · peak gust
52%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.4 mm on 24 Jul.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,100 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,885 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Pekan where it started
    2,332 ha reached on 8 Jul
    0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
8 Jul 31.7 °C 66 % 25 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 0
9 Jul 30.8 °C 76 % 25 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 0
10 Jul 30.3 °C 70 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 1
11 Jul 30.5 °C 71 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 2
12 Jul 32.2 °C 63 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
13 Jul 31.8 °C 65 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 5
14 Jul 32.1 °C 62 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Low 7
15 Jul 32.9 °C 56 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
16 Jul 33.7 °C 57 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
17 Jul 33.5 °C 60 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm Low 8
18 Jul 32.6 °C 61 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
19 Jul 33.1 °C 64 % 38 km/h 1.9 mm Very low 4
20 Jul 34.2 °C 52 % 32 km/h 2.9 mm Very low 4
21 Jul 33.5 °C 56 % 34 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 2
22 Jul 33.1 °C 58 % 34 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 5
23 Jul 32.0 °C 62 % 27 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 1
24 Jul after 33.2 °C 60 % 29 km/h 10.4 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2018
After · 30 Jul 2018

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 · 321Every 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 Malaysia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pekan fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 July 2018 and 23 July 2018: 16 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,316 hectares (23.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pekan (2,332 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 52 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Malaysia (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: 999

Satellite cross-check

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
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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 999.

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 License). 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.