Three Satellites Confirm Malaysia Pipeline Explosion: VNF Thermal Detections Corroborate Major Industrial Fire Near Kuala Lumpur
Three Satellites Confirm Malaysia Pipeline Explosion: VNF Thermal Detections Corroborate Major Industrial Fire Near Kuala Lumpur
PAYNE INSTITUTE COMMENTARY SERIES: COMMENTARY
April 2, 2025
On April 1, 2025, a significant gas pipeline explosion occurred in Putra Heights, a suburb of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, resulting in a massive fireball that injured at least 145 individuals, including three children. The explosion caused flames to soar up to 20 stories high and created a large crater near a residential neighborhood. Health Minister Dzulkefly Ahmad reported that 104 people are receiving treatment, some for second and third-degree burns, in public and private hospitals. The fire also damaged 190 houses and 148 vehicles. Authorities have designated a 290-meter area around the site as off-limits, and investigations into the cause are ongoing. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim has assured that the government and Petronas will be responsible for repairing the damaged homes, a process expected to take several months.
Satellite-based thermal anomaly detection systems, such as the Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) Nightfire (VNF), are instrumental in identifying and monitoring such incidents. VNF specializes in detecting and characterizing high-temperature events, including gas flares and industrial fires, by capturing nighttime infrared emissions. In the case of the Putra Heights explosion, VNF data detected with three satellites Suomi NPP, NOAA-20 and NOAA-21 provides the fire’s intensity, temperature typical for natural gas fires, duration, and spatial extent, contributing to a comprehensive analysis of the incident’s impact.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mikhail Zhizhin
Research Associate, Earth Observation Group, Payne Institute for Public Policy, Colorado School of Mines
Mikhail Zhizhin, M.Science in mathematics from the Moscow State University in 1984, Ph.D. in computational seismology and pattern recognition from the Russian Acad. Sci. in 1992. Research positions from 1987 to 2012 in geophysics, space research and nuclear physics at Russian Acad. Sci., later at NOAA and CU Boulder. Currently he is a researcher at the Earth Observation Group at Colorado School of Mines. His applied research fields evolved from high performance computing in seismology, geodynamics, terrestrial and space weather to deep learning in remote sensing. He is developing new machine learning algorithms to better understand the Nature with Big Data.
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