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Pong fire, 5 April 2019 ปง · Pong

Out · last detection 13 Apr 2019, 18:16 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2019 in Pong, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,737 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in Phayao Province since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 142 in Thailand in 2019, of 385.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pong · 2016Pong · 2026Chiang Kham · 2020Song Khwae · 2023

Burnt area
1,737ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
5 Apr 2019 – 12 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
5 Apr
2019
Heat detections
68
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
25MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr12 Apr
13 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2019 · 1 MW · 1 6 Apr 2019 · 6 MW · 3 7 Apr 2019 · 6 MW · 1 8 Apr 2019 · 16 MW · 5 9 Apr 2019 · 6 MW · 2 10 Apr 2019 · 143 MW · 16 11 Apr 2019 · 13 MW · 1 12 Apr 2019 · 30 MW · 6 13 Apr 2019 · 2 MW · 1
5 Apr 7 Apr 9 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 13 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

38°high
36km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 21 Apr.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,342 ha in 2016, 260 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,340 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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 where it started
    1,746 ha
    1.0 %

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)
31 Mar 36.3 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Apr 35.8 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Apr 35.0 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Apr 35.3 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Apr 36.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm High 23
5 Apr 36.0 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Apr 35.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Apr 37.1 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Apr 38.1 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Apr 37.8 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Apr 37.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Apr 38.2 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Apr 37.9 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Apr after 38.3 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Apr after 39.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Apr after 40.0 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Apr after 38.7 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Apr after 38.6 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Apr after 38.8 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Apr after 39.6 °C 26 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Apr after 38.7 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Apr after 37.5 °C 35 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2019
After · 19 Apr 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 · 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pong fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2019 and 12 April 2019: 8 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 1,737 hectares (17.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pong (1,746 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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. 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 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.