Coal Plant Fire

200845,811 acresOregon

The Coal Plant Fire burned 45,811 acres, about 72 square miles, across Morrow County. It began on June 29, 2008.

Watch how it happened

Coal Plant Fire · 2008

How it happened

Watch it burn in the order satellites saw it, coloured by how severely each place burned.

About this replay

Date (UTC)—Historical replay

Burned so far—acres

High severity—of the area so far

Detections8satellite fire pixels

Fire milestones

Burn severityHigh, Moderate, Low, Unburned to low, Increased greenness

Burning nowAreas reached in the last half day of satellite passes

Washington, D.C., to scale61 square miles of land, drawn at the fire’s scale

Timing: NASA FIRMS satellite fire detections (8 MODIS) inside the final perimeter; each place takes the time of its nearest detection, so the order is satellite-observed but interpolated between passes, roughly every 12 hours. Severity: Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS, U.S. Forest Service), mapped from Landsat after the fire.

How severely it burned

Burn severity inside the final perimeter, classified from Landsat images taken before and after the fire.

Map of burn severity across the Coal Plant Fire

Burn severity by class
Severity	Share	Acres
Moderatemixed: many trees killed, some survive	5.5%	2,519
Lowsurface fire, most trees survive	86%	39,414
Unburned to lowislands inside the perimeter, little change	8.4%	3,868

No part of the fire was classed as high severity; 5% burned at moderate severity.

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (U.S. Geological Survey and USDA Forest Service). Classes come from the change in a Landsat burn index (dNBR) between images before and after the fire; acres are each class’s share of the fire’s mapped area.

Where it burned

Acres inside each county, measured from the satellite-mapped perimeter.

Acres burned by county

Morrow County	OR	45,801

Other large fires in Oregon in 2008

Jackies Butte Fire25,577 acres

Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (USGS and U.S. Forest Service). Type recorded: Wildfire.