How long did the Phookood fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2026 to 6 April 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2026 to 30 March 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,615 hectares (26.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Phookood (2,463 ha, 1.0 %); Kham (93 ha, 0.0 %); Pek (77 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.

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 · 2026-03-26 → 2026-04-06

Phookood fire, 26 March 2026 Phookood, Kham, Pek

Out · last detection 6 Apr 2026, 05:41 UTC

The fire started on 26 March 2026 in Phookood, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,615 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 73th largest in Xiangkhouang since 2016 (of 109 with a page). Number 198 in Laos in 2026, of 308.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pek · 2023 Phookood · 2019 Phookood · 2025 Kham · 2026

Burnt area: 2,615ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 26 Mar 2026 – 6 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; districts
Started on: 26 Mar; 2026
Heat detections: 68; in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start: 13; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 181MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Mar6 Apr

Play back 6 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Mar 27 Mar 29 Mar 2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 6 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

33°high

50km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

81% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 525 ha in 2019, 1,878 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,123 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% 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

Phookood where it started

2,463 ha

1.0 %
Kham

93 ha

0.0 %
Pek

77 ha

0.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
26 Mar	33.1 °C	39 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
27 Mar	33.1 °C	38 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
28 Mar	33.0 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
29 Mar	31.9 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 18
30 Mar	31.3 °C	44 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
31 Mar	31.7 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
1 Apr	32.4 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
2 Apr	32.2 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
3 Apr	33.2 °C	41 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
4 Apr	32.2 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
5 Apr	31.7 °C	47 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
6 Apr	33.1 °C	45 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
7 Apr after	33.2 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 21
8 Apr after	35.1 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
9 Apr after	35.0 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Apr after	34.1 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Apr after	33.9 °C	35 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Apr after	34.4 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
13 Apr after	34.8 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
14 Apr after	33.7 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Apr after	34.4 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Apr after	36.0 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Mar 2026

After · 13 Apr 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 121 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 103: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak121 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM10136 µg/m³

Optical depth2.68

WHO 15

2425262728293031123456789

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 · 68Every 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 Phookood fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2026 to 6 April 2026 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 March 2026 to 30 March 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,615 hectares (26.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Phookood (2,463 ha, 1.0 %); Kham (93 ha, 0.0 %); Pek (77 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
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 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?

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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 26 March 2026 to 30 March 2026. 68 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.

Where it burned