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Taobei District fire, 17 March 2018 洮北区 · Taobei District, Zhenlai County

Out · last measured on 28 Mar 2018

The fire started on 17 March 2018 in Taobei District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,591 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 185th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 3 in China in 2018, of 44.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Taobei District · 2016Taobei District · 2016Taobei District · 2026Zhenlai County · 2026

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
2,591ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
17 Mar 2018 – 28 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
17 Mar
2018
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

26°high
70km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 30 Mar.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,001 ha in 2016, 1,035 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,677 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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. Taobei District 洮北区 where it started
    2,015 ha
    1.0 %
  2. Zhenlai County 镇赉县
    573 ha
    0.1 %

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 area13 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 13 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (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)
17 Mar 9.9 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
18 Mar 12.9 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
19 Mar 2.0 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
20 Mar 5.0 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
21 Mar 10.8 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
22 Mar 14.4 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
23 Mar 13.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
24 Mar 18.9 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
25 Mar 22.2 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
26 Mar 25.6 °C 8 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Mar 24.9 °C 16 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Mar 14.1 °C 13 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Mar after 11.1 °C 10 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
30 Mar after 13.8 °C 8 % 43 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Mar 2018
After · 4 Apr 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in China ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Taobei District fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 March 2018 and 28 March 2018: 12 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 2,591 hectares (25.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Taobei District (2,015 ha, 1.0 %); Zhenlai County (573 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.6 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 70 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 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

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
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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 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 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.