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TH · Thailand · –

Ban Rai fire, 4 March 2020 บ้านไร่ · Ban Rai, Thong Pha Phum, Umphang

Out · last detection 14 Apr 2020, 18:36 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2020 in Ban Rai, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 41 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 65,377 hectares from heat detections, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Uthai Thani Province since 2016 (of 73 with a page). The largest in Thailand in 2020, of 457.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ban Rai · 2019Ban Rai · 2016Ban Rai · 2016Ban Rai · 2026

Burnt area
65,377ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
41days
4 Mar 2020 – 13 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit
5
districts
Started on
4 Mar
2020
Heat detections
2,890
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
333MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar13 Apr
14 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 2020 · 3 MW · 3 5 Mar 2020 · 48 MW · 10 6 Mar 2020 · 47 MW · 26 7 Mar 2020 · 83 MW · 38 8 Mar 2020 · 209 MW · 38 9 Mar 2020 · 391 MW · 60 10 Mar 2020 · 604 MW · 82 11 Mar 2020 · 1,336 MW · 145 12 Mar 2020 · 673 MW · 132 13 Mar 2020 · 283 MW · 104 14 Mar 2020 · 243 MW · 34 15 Mar 2020 · 7 MW · 2 17 Mar 2020 · 2 MW · 2 18 Mar 2020 · 76 MW · 29 19 Mar 2020 · 165 MW · 43 20 Mar 2020 · 221 MW · 47 21 Mar 2020 · 295 MW · 71 22 Mar 2020 · 839 MW · 187 23 Mar 2020 · 656 MW · 170 24 Mar 2020 · 218 MW · 77 25 Mar 2020 · 252 MW · 74 26 Mar 2020 · 256 MW · 79 27 Mar 2020 · 1,289 MW · 283 28 Mar 2020 · 1,492 MW · 324 29 Mar 2020 · 953 MW · 228 30 Mar 2020 · 1,078 MW · 182 31 Mar 2020 · 696 MW · 80 1 Apr 2020 · 376 MW · 88 2 Apr 2020 · 110 MW · 60 3 Apr 2020 · 203 MW · 48 4 Apr 2020 · 72 MW · 17 5 Apr 2020 · 20 MW · 6 6 Apr 2020 · 55 MW · 13 7 Apr 2020 · 49 MW · 13 8 Apr 2020 · 12 MW · 11 9 Apr 2020 · 4 MW · 2 10 Apr 2020 · 22 MW · 10 11 Apr 2020 · 274 MW · 44 12 Apr 2020 · 44 MW · 19 13 Apr 2020 · 7 MW · 8 14 Apr 2020 · 1 MW · 1
4 Mar 13 Mar 28 Mar 10 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.1 mm on 14 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 41% of the area of London (654 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. Ban Rai บ้านไร่ where it started
    44,443 ha
    13 %
  2. Thong Pha Phum ทองผาภูมิ
    11,931 ha
    3.1 %
  3. Umphang อุ้มผาง
    8,518 ha
    1.8 %
  4. Sangkhla Buri สังขละบุรี
    714 ha
    0.2 %
  5. Si Sawat ศรีสวัสดิ์
    114 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.14 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
4 Mar 31.4 °C 49 % 26 km/h 2.2 mm Low 7
5 Mar 31.5 °C 53 % 31 km/h 1.8 mm Low 6
6 Mar 31.7 °C 49 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
7 Mar 33.9 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Mar 34.6 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Mar 35.0 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Mar 35.1 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Mar 35.1 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Mar 35.7 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
13 Mar 36.0 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Mar 35.5 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Mar 29.4 °C 49 % 31 km/h 3.7 mm Low 5
16 Mar 28.8 °C 68 % 23 km/h 10.9 mm Very low 0
17 Mar 32.8 °C 46 % 19 km/h 2.4 mm Very low 2
18 Mar 34.3 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
19 Mar 33.7 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
20 Mar 32.3 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
21 Mar 33.6 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Mar 33.7 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Mar 34.5 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
24 Mar 34.5 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
25 Mar 32.2 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Mar 34.1 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
27 Mar 34.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Mar 35.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Mar 35.5 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Mar 35.3 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Mar 36.1 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Apr 36.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Apr 36.1 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Apr 35.5 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Apr 36.5 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Apr 34.0 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Apr 34.8 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Apr 35.8 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Apr 35.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Apr 36.4 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Apr 35.6 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Apr 37.4 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Apr 36.5 °C 29 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
13 Apr 33.9 °C 43 % 30 km/h 11.6 mm Very low 4
14 Apr after 29.3 °C 70 % 26 km/h 6.1 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2020
After · 20 Apr 2020

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 · 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 Thailand

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ban Rai fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2020 and 13 April 2020: 41 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 65,377 hectares (653.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Ban Rai (44,443 ha, 13 %); Thong Pha Phum (11,931 ha, 3.1 %); Umphang (8,518 ha, 1.8 %); Sangkhla Buri (714 ha, 0.2 %); Si Sawat (114 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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. Start date: 26 February 2020 → 4 March 2020.
  2. Start date: 4 March 2020 → 26 February 2020.

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
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; 9 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 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.