Taobei District fire, 16 February 2026 洮北区 · Taobei District, Taonan City
The fire started on 16 February 2026 in Taobei District, China, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,510 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 93th largest in Jilin Province since 2016 (of 825 with a page). Number 152 in China in 2026, of 1094.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,510ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 16 Feb 2026 – 21 Feb 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 16 Feb
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 62 MW
- Danger at start
- 5
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 257MW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 53 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 22 Feb.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 625 ha in 2016, 1,471 ha in 2017, 223 ha in 2019, 1,015 ha in 2020, 697 ha in 2022, 333 ha in 2023, 269 ha in 2024, 2,133 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,732 ha that had burned before.
- 719 ha Taobei District fire, March 2025 1,399 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 608 ha Taobei District fire, April 2022 1,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 589 ha Taobei District fire, October 2017 1,003 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 450 ha Taobei District fire, March 2025 1,029 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 277 ha Taobei District fire, October 2017 1,198 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
4,504 ha reached on 16 Feb2.3 %
-
Taonan City 洮南市5 ha0.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 64 hectares of built-up land and about 1,900 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Feb | -2.5 °C | 22 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 16 Feb | 3.6 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 17 Feb | -2.6 °C | 37 % | 42 km/h | 1.1 mm | Very low 1 |
| 18 Feb | -4.1 °C | 22 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 19 Feb | 6.2 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 20 Feb | 9.0 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 5 |
| 21 Feb | 5.0 °C | 36 % | 33 km/h | 1.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 22 Feb after | -2.6 °C | 40 % | 68 km/h | 4.1 mm | Very low 0 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 21 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 56Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,413 haTaobei District 洮北区20 February 2026 · 2 days · 8 km away
- 3,043 haTaobei District 洮北区19 March 2025 · 6 days · 10 km away
- 5,873 haTaobei District 洮北区16 March 2026 · 15 days · 15 km away
- 3,892 haTaobei District 洮北区6 March 2017 · 8 days · 30 km away
- 10,871 haTaobei District 洮北区15 March 2026 · 11 days · 31 km away
- 2,858 haTaobei District 洮北区18 March 2026 · 11 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Taobei District fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 February 2026 to 21 February 2026 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 February 2026 to 21 February 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,510 hectares (45.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Taobei District (4,504 ha, 2.3 %); Taonan City (5 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 9.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 6, class Low.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 19 February 2026 → 16 February 2026.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 February 2026 to 21 February 2026. 56 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.