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Bawlake fire, 10 March 2016 Bawlake, Hpruso, Hpasawng

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

The fire started on 10 March 2016 in Bawlake, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,526 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 39th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 12 in Myanmar in 2016, of 157.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hpasawng · 2026Bawlake · 2026Bawlake · 2021Mese · 2024

Burnt area
6,526ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
10 Mar 2016 – 21 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
10 Mar
2016
Heat detections
238
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
336MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Mar21 Mar
22 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 2016 · 225 MW · 13 11 Mar 2016 · 25 MW · 9 12 Mar 2016 · 1,066 MW · 36 13 Mar 2016 · 1,400 MW · 44 14 Mar 2016 · 30 MW · 7 15 Mar 2016 · 245 MW · 14 16 Mar 2016 · 39 MW · 11 17 Mar 2016 · 118 MW · 15 18 Mar 2016 · 897 MW · 40 19 Mar 2016 · 185 MW · 13 20 Mar 2016 · 7 MW · 3 21 Mar 2016 · 72 MW · 11 22 Mar 2016 · 63 MW · 10
10 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 20 Mar 22 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
42km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

  1. Bawlake where it started
    4,493 ha
    2.3 %
  2. Hpruso
    1,933 ha
    1.2 %
  3. Hpasawng
    134 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 area1.1 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
10 Mar 35.7 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 Mar 37.0 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Mar 35.9 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
13 Mar 35.8 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Mar 35.7 °C 36 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
15 Mar 36.7 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Mar 36.8 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Mar 37.1 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
18 Mar 37.2 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
19 Mar 37.0 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
20 Mar 37.5 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Mar 37.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Mar after 36.0 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Mar after 36.9 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
24 Mar after 36.9 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Mar after 36.4 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Mar after 36.9 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Mar after 36.2 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Mar after 36.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Mar after 35.9 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Mar after 35.1 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Mar after 38.1 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Mar 2016
After · 28 Mar 2016

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 · 238Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bawlake fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 March 2016 and 21 March 2016: 12 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 6,526 hectares (65.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bawlake (4,493 ha, 2.3 %); Hpruso (1,933 ha, 1.2 %); Hpasawng (134 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Myanmar (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

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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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. 238 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.