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Song Khwae fire, March 2019 สองแคว · Pong, Chiang Kham, Song Khwae

Out · last detection 15 Mar 2019, 19:00 UTC

The fire started on 12 March 2019 in Song Khwae, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 93th largest in Nan Province since 2016 (of 189 with a page). Number 180 in Thailand in 2019, of 385.

The power measured by the satellite is low (20.1 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chiang Kham · 2016Chiang Kham · 2020Khop · 2026Phu Sang · 2026

Burnt area
1,532ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
12 Mar 2019 – 15 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
12 Mar
2019
Heat detections
49
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
84MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar15 Mar
15 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

12 Mar 2019 · 156 MW · 14 13 Mar 2019 · 119 MW · 21 14 Mar 2019 · 41 MW · 9 15 Mar 2019 · 18 MW · 5
12 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 15 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

29°high
31km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,313 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,110 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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. Pong ปง
    765 ha
    0.4 %
  2. Chiang Kham เชียงคำ
    527 ha
    0.6 %
  3. Song Khwae สองแคว where it started
    249 ha
    0.4 %

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 Mar 27.9 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Mar 28.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Mar 28.6 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Mar 28.3 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Mar after 29.0 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Mar after 29.5 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
18 Mar after 29.1 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
19 Mar after 29.5 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
20 Mar after 30.1 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
21 Mar after 30.1 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Mar after 29.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Mar after 30.3 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Mar after 29.0 °C 37 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Mar after 29.6 °C 44 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Mar 2019
After · 22 Mar 2019

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 · 49Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Song Khwae fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 March 2019 and 15 March 2019: 4 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 1,532 hectares (15.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Pong (765 ha, 0.4 %); Chiang Kham (527 ha, 0.6 %); Song Khwae (249 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Thailand (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: 199 · 191 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 199 · 191.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 49 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.