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VN · Vietnam · –

Thanh Binh fire, 5 April 2026 Thanh Binh, Tam Nong

Out · last detection 12 Apr 2026, 07:07 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2026 in Thanh Binh, Vietnam, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,519 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 14 in Vietnam in 2026, of 99.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
3,519ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
5 Apr 2026 – 15 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Apr
2026
Heat detections
38
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
50MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr15 Apr
12 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2026 · 4 MW · 1 6 Apr 2026 · 45 MW · 3 7 Apr 2026 · 42 MW · 9 8 Apr 2026 · 21 MW · 4 9 Apr 2026 · 162 MW · 9 10 Apr 2026 · 7 MW · 2 11 Apr 2026 · 51 MW · 6 12 Apr 2026 · 67 MW · 4
5 Apr 7 Apr 9 Apr 11 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

36°high
31km/h · peak gust
39%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 19 Apr.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 139 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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. Thanh Binh where it started
    3,410 ha
    9.9 %
  2. 131 ha
    0.3 %

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 2025
Built-up area48 ha
Residents≈ 7,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 48 hectares of built-up land and about 7,400 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)
5 Apr 35.2 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Apr 35.2 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Apr 35.9 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Apr 36.5 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Apr 34.9 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Apr 35.7 °C 42 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Apr 34.8 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Apr 36.3 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Apr 35.3 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
14 Apr 35.4 °C 47 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
15 Apr 35.3 °C 50 % 27 km/h 3.2 mm Low 8
16 Apr after 36.6 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
17 Apr after 36.1 °C 41 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Apr after 36.5 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
19 Apr after 35.1 °C 48 % 29 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2026
After · 22 Apr 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 10 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 79: 5.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak122 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10123 µg/m³
Optical depth1.09
3 Apr7 Apr11 Apr15 Apr
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 0Every 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 Vietnam

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Thanh Binh fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2026 and 15 April 2026: 11 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 3,519 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Thanh Binh (3,410 ha, 9.9 %); Tam Nong (131 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Vietnam (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: 114 · 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.

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 114.

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. 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 2025, 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.