How long did the Phouvong fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2025 to 31 March 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2025 to 24 March 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,443 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Phouvong (2,459 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 38 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 · 2025-03-09 → 2025-03-31

Phouvong fire, March 2025 Phouvong

Out · last detection 31 Mar 2025, 19:01 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2025 in Phouvong, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,443 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Attapeu since 2016 (of 37 with a page). Number 30 in Laos in 2025, of 54.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Phouvong · 2023 Phouvong · 2024

Burnt area: 2,443ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 9 Mar 2025 – 31 Mar 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 9 Mar; 2025
Heat detections: 95; in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 83MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar31 Mar

Play back 31 Mar 2025

How it evolved, day by day

9 Mar 12 Mar 17 Mar 20 Mar 23 Mar 26 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

38km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.6 mm on 10 Apr.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,035 ha in 2019, 1,414 ha in 2020, 1,264 ha in 2021, 763 ha in 2022, 2,666 ha in 2023, 1,532 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,184 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

Phouvong where it started

2,459 ha

0.7 %

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)
9 Mar	36.9 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Mar	31.9 °C	43 %	26 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 11
11 Mar	37.3 °C	26 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 Mar	35.3 °C	38 %	17 km/h	0.6 mm	High 22
13 Mar	35.0 °C	35 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
14 Mar	37.6 °C	33 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Mar	38.6 °C	25 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Mar	34.8 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 29
17 Mar	35.1 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Mar	33.3 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Mar	31.4 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Mar	30.5 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Mar	33.0 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Mar	36.1 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar	37.2 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Mar	38.4 °C	23 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Mar	36.8 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Mar	36.8 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Mar	35.5 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
28 Mar	36.6 °C	39 %	21 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
29 Mar	36.7 °C	42 %	29 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 10
30 Mar	35.7 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.8 mm	High 24
31 Mar	35.8 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Apr after	35.5 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Apr after	37.0 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 Apr after	37.2 °C	28 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
4 Apr after	38.5 °C	27 %	25 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
5 Apr after	39.0 °C	26 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Apr after	37.1 °C	35 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
7 Apr after	37.5 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Apr after	39.3 °C	26 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Apr after	38.3 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Apr after	27.9 °C	65 %	17 km/h	6.6 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Mar 2025

After · 7 Apr 2025

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 28 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 157 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak157 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10158 µg/m³

Optical depth2.31

WHO 15

78910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031123

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 · 95Every 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 Phouvong fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2025 to 31 March 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2025 to 24 March 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,443 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Phouvong (2,459 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 38 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 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 15 March 2025 to 24 March 2025. 95 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