Xay fire, 13 April 2024 Xay
The fire started on 13 April 2024 in Xay, Laos, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,447 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 180th largest in Oudomxay since 2016 (of 241 with a page). Number 72 in Laos in 2024, of 109.
- Burnt area
- 2,447ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 13 Apr 2024 – 24 Apr 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 13 Apr
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 139
- in a single hotspot: 135 MW
- Energy released
- 2.7GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,174 ha in 2016, 1,061 ha in 2017, 2,059 ha in 2018, 1,385 ha in 2019, 1,396 ha in 2020, 1,156 ha in 2021, 1,768 ha in 2022, 3,195 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,460 ha that had burned before.
- 2,690 ha Xay fire, March 2023 60,413 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,174 ha Xay fire, April 2016 23,891 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,059 ha Xay fire, April 2018 31,315 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,396 ha Xay fire, April 2020 3,975 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,311 ha Namor fire, March 2019 23,964 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,029 ha Xay fire, March 2021 2,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 642 ha Xay fire, April 2022 5,457 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 529 ha Xay fire, April 2017 2,837 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Xay where it started2,459 ha reached on 13 Apr1.2 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 17 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 69: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 139Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Xay fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 April 2024 to 24 April 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 April 2024 to 18 April 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,447 hectares (24.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Xay (2,459 ha, 1.2 %).
- 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
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
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.