How long did the Sam Ngao fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 March 2017 and 18 March 2017: 10 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 5,043 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sam Ngao (5,064 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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.

TH · Thailand · 2017-03-09 → 2017-03-18

Sam Ngao fire, 9 March 2017 สามเงา · Sam Ngao

Out · last detection 19 Mar 2017, 06:42 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2017 in Sam Ngao, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,043 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in Tak Province since 2016 (of 329 with a page). Number 7 in Thailand in 2017, of 155.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.5 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: Ban Tak · 2026 Mae Phrik · 2025 Mae Phrik · 2019 Mae Phrik · 2024

Burnt area: 5,043ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 9 Mar 2017 – 18 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 9 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 183; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 74MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar18 Mar

Play back 19 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 19 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

36°high

46km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,332 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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

Sam Ngao สามเงา where it started

5,064 ha reached on 9 Mar

1.8 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
25 Feb	35.2 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Feb	34.6 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Feb	33.6 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Feb	34.1 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
1 Mar	34.2 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Mar	32.8 °C	34 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
3 Mar	34.5 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
4 Mar	33.7 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Mar	34.1 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Mar	34.5 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Mar	34.1 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Mar	34.7 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Mar	32.6 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Mar	33.2 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Mar	34.9 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Mar	34.6 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Mar	35.4 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Mar	35.2 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Mar	35.6 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Mar	35.6 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Mar	33.9 °C	31 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Mar	34.3 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
19 Mar after	34.3 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Mar after	34.8 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Mar after	34.0 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Mar after	35.0 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar after	36.3 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar after	36.4 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
25 Mar after	35.3 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Mar after	36.9 °C	25 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Mar after	31.7 °C	45 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
28 Mar after	33.6 °C	43 %	23 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Mar 2017

After · 25 Mar 2017

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.

Detections table · 183Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Sam Ngao fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 March 2017 and 18 March 2017: 10 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 5,043 hectares (50.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sam Ngao (5,064 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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

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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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. 183 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 2015, 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