Tailai County fire, October 2026 泰来县 · Tailai County
The fire started on 26 October 2026 in Tailai County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,926 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 371th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1846 with a page). Number 247 in China in 2026, of 983.
The power measured by the satellite is low (26.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Is it still active?
No detections since 27 Oct 2026, 05:48 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 2,926ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 26 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 26 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 50
- in a single hotspot: 26 MW
- Average daily power
- 202MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
2,912 ha reached on 26 Oct0.7 %
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.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 50Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,434 haDorbod-Mongol Autonomous County 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县October 2025 · 12 days · 13 km away
- 7,524 haDorbod-Mongol Autonomous County 杜尔伯特蒙古族自治县14 February 2024 · 4 days · 14 km away
- 28,521 haZhenlai County 镇赉县11 November 2025 · 13 days · 31 km away
- 17,268 haZhenlai County 镇赉县14 March 2025 · 11 days · 31 km away
- 10,640 haZhenlai County 镇赉县7 March 2016 · 13 days · 32 km away
- 15,408 haZhenlai County 镇赉县14 March 2026 · 14 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Tailai County fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 October 2026 and 27 October 2026: 2 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 2,926 hectares (29.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Tailai County (2,912 ha, 0.7 %).
- Is the Tailai County fire still active?
- No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 05:48 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
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
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. 50 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.