How long did the Wang Chin fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2016 and 21 March 2016: 9 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 2,438 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Den Chai (1,382 ha, 2.5 %); Si Satchanalai (716 ha, 0.3 %); Laplae (211 ha, 0.4 %); Wang Chin (142 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

TH · Thailand · 2016-03-13 → 2016-03-21

Wang Chin fire, 13 March 2016 วังชิ้น · Den Chai, Si Satchanalai, Laplae

Out · last detection 22 Mar 2016, 19:01 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2016 in Wang Chin, Thailand, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,438 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Phrae Province since 2016 (of 116 with a page). Number 83 in Thailand in 2016, of 387.

The power measured by the satellite is low (17.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Den Chai · 2019 Den Chai · 2016

Burnt area: 2,438ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 13 Mar 2016 – 21 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 4; districts
Started on: 13 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 95; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 35MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar21 Mar

Play back 22 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 19 Mar 21 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high

41km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

Den Chai เด่นชัย

1,382 ha

2.5 %
Si Satchanalai ศรีสัชนาลัย

716 ha

0.3 %
Laplae ลับแล

211 ha

0.4 %
Wang Chin วังชิ้น where it started

142 ha

0.1 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.67 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.67 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
6 Mar	35.2 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
7 Mar	36.7 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Mar	37.8 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Mar	37.6 °C	29 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Mar	37.7 °C	33 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Mar	37.1 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Mar	35.4 °C	42 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Mar	36.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Mar	37.5 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Mar	38.3 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Mar	37.7 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Mar	38.0 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Mar	38.3 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
19 Mar	38.0 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Mar	38.1 °C	32 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Mar	37.8 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Mar after	38.9 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar after	37.8 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar after	38.1 °C	30 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Mar after	35.2 °C	42 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Mar after	34.1 °C	41 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Mar after	33.3 °C	47 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
28 Mar after	34.7 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Mar after	35.0 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Mar after	35.1 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
31 Mar after	36.6 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.6 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Mar 2016

After · 28 Mar 2016

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 · 95Every 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 Thailand ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Wang Chin fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2016 and 21 March 2016: 9 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 2,438 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Den Chai (1,382 ha, 2.5 %); Si Satchanalai (716 ha, 0.3 %); Laplae (211 ha, 0.4 %); Wang Chin (142 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

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

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.

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What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 95 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 2015, 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