How long did the Tonpheung fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 March 2020 to 9 April 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 March 2020 to 9 April 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,437 hectares (74.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Meung (4,069 ha, 2.5 %); Tonpheung (3,408 ha, 3.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Laos (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

LA · Laos · 2020-03-17 → 2020-04-09

Tonpheung fire, 17 March 2020 Meung, Tonpheung

Out · last detection 9 Apr 2020, 05:59 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2020 in Tonpheung, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,437 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 9th largest in Bokeo since 2016 (of 70 with a page). Number 25 in Laos in 2020, of 188.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Meung · 2016 Tonpheung · 2019 Meung · 2020 Meung · 2023

Burnt area: 7,437ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 17 Mar 2020 – 9 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 17 Mar; 2020
Heat detections: 597; in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 146MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar9 Apr

Play back 9 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Mar 22 Mar 26 Mar 30 Mar 3 Apr 7 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

45km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 38.2 mm on 13 Apr.

This area had burned before

33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,797 ha in 2016, 1,382 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,481 ha that had burned before.

1,797 ha Meung fire, April 2016 3,329 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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

Meung

4,069 ha reached on 19 Mar

2.5 %
Tonpheung where it started

3,408 ha reached on 17 Mar

3.9 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.00 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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	34.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Mar	35.1 °C	25 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Mar	33.9 °C	20 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Mar	33.3 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.3 mm	High 36
21 Mar	32.0 °C	31 %	41 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 21
22 Mar	32.9 °C	29 %	37 km/h	1.0 mm	High 24
23 Mar	31.5 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Mar	32.7 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Mar	33.9 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Mar	33.9 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Mar	34.2 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Mar	34.4 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
29 Mar	35.3 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Mar	35.3 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
31 Mar	35.8 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
1 Apr	36.0 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Apr	35.5 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Apr	35.5 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Apr	35.3 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
5 Apr	35.5 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Apr	35.6 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Apr	35.8 °C	20 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Apr	34.6 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
9 Apr	34.1 °C	33 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
10 Apr after	35.1 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
11 Apr after	35.3 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Apr after	35.6 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 37
13 Apr after	24.6 °C	74 %	35 km/h	38.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Mar 2020

After · 16 Apr 2020

Before After

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 · 597Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Laos ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tonpheung fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 March 2020 to 9 April 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 March 2020 to 9 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,437 hectares (74.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Meung (4,069 ha, 2.5 %); Tonpheung (3,408 ha, 3.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Laos (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.

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 March 2020 to 9 April 2020. 597 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 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.

Where it burned