Yi'an County fire, April 2025 依安县 · Yi'an County, Nehe City
The fire started on 26 April 2025 in Yi'an County, China, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,047 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 1706th largest in Heilongjiang Province since 2016 (of 1841 with a page). Number 660 in China in 2025, of 711.
The power measured by the satellite is low (24.3 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…
- Burnt area
- 1,047ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 26 Apr 2025 – 1 May 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- counties
- Started on
- 26 Apr
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 43
- in a single hotspot: 24 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 63MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 358 ha in 2020.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Beijing (Dongcheng and Xicheng) boundary: geoBoundaries · Lee Beryman, OpenStreetMap · © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
774 ha reached on 26 Apr0.2 %
-
Nehe City 讷河市276 ha reached on 26 Apr0.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and about 350 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 27 Apr | 10.0 °C | 24 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 28 Apr | 13.8 °C | 36 % | 32 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very low 4 |
| 29 Apr | 18.3 °C | 31 % | 71 km/h | 2.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 30 Apr | 12.1 °C | 23 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 4 |
| 1 May | 13.4 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 2 May after | 15.6 °C | 39 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very low 5 |
| 3 May after | 12.6 °C | 46 % | 42 km/h | 0.9 mm | Very low 4 |
| 4 May after | 12.3 °C | 31 % | 44 km/h | 0.3 mm | Low 7 |
| 5 May after | 14.4 °C | 25 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 6 May after | 15.9 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 8 |
| 7 May after | 16.7 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 8 May after | 17.6 °C | 27 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 9 May after | 20.5 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 10 May after | 22.0 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 11 May after | 21.6 °C | 30 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
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 27 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 2.0 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 · 43Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,204 haNehe City 讷河市14 April 2026 · 3 days · 11 km away
- 3,068 haFuyu County 富裕县1 April 2026 · 4 days · 19 km away
- 24,666 haNehe City 讷河市13 April 2026 · 4 days · 21 km away
- 2,871 haKeshan County 克山县14 April 2026 · 3 days · 25 km away
- 4,957 haNehe City 讷河市14 April 2026 · 3 days · 35 km away
- 2,642 haYi'an County 依安县12 October 2026 · 5 days · 35 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Yi'an County fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 April 2025 to 1 May 2025 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 April 2025 to 1 May 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,047 hectares (10.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Yi'an County (774 ha, 0.2 %); Nehe City (276 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 18.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 5, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of China (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: 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 27 April 2025 → 26 April 2025.
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
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 27 April 2025 to 1 May 2025. 43 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.
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 ADM3 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.