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TH · Thailand · –

Thong Pha Phum fire, 2 April 2026 ทองผาภูมิ · Thong Pha Phum

Out · last detection 11 Apr 2026, 07:27 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2026 in Thong Pha Phum, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,841 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 328 in Thailand in 2026, of 688.

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.

The power measured by the satellite is low (9.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
1,841ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
2 Apr 2026 – 12 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
2 Apr
2026
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 10 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
12MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr12 Apr
11 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

2 Apr 2026 · 1 MW · 1 3 Apr 2026 · 11 MW · 2 4 Apr 2026 · 3 MW · 2 6 Apr 2026 · 6 MW · 1 7 Apr 2026 · 53 MW · 14 8 Apr 2026 · 8 MW · 3 11 Apr 2026 · 4 MW · 1
2 Apr 4 Apr 7 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

39°high
40km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 46 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (18 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. Thong Pha Phum ทองผาภูมิ where it started
    1,851 ha reached on 2 Apr
    0.5 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
2 Apr 38.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm High 29
3 Apr 37.7 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Apr 36.0 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
5 Apr 36.1 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Apr 36.5 °C 46 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm High 26
7 Apr 36.8 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
8 Apr 37.5 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Apr 36.9 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Apr 37.5 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Apr 35.7 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
12 Apr 37.4 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Apr after 35.8 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Apr after 38.8 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Apr after 37.6 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Apr after 39.0 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Apr after 39.1 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Apr after 39.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Apr after 36.9 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Apr after 37.5 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Apr after 36.8 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
22 Apr after 37.0 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Mar 2026
After · 19 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 12 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 85 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 42: 2.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak85 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10105 µg/m³
Optical depth0.71
1 Apr4 Apr7 Apr10 Apr13 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 · 24Every 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 Thailand

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Thong Pha Phum fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 April 2026 to 12 April 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 April 2026 to 11 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,841 hectares (18.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Thong Pha Phum (1,851 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 April 2026 → 12 April 2026.
  2. Start date: 3 April 2026 → 2 April 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 199 · 191.

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 3 April 2026 to 11 April 2026. 24 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.