How long did the Bawlake fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2018 to 5 April 2018 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 March 2018 to 29 March 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,125 hectares (131.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bawlake (7,534 ha, 3.8 %); Mese (5,664 ha, 3.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2018-03-13 → 2018-04-05

Bawlake fire, March 2018 Bawlake, Mese

Out · last detection 5 Apr 2018, 19:50 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2018 in Bawlake, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,125 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 2 in Myanmar in 2018, of 55.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mese · 2016 Mese · 2017 Bawlake · 2016 Mese · 2026

Burnt area: 13,125ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 13 Mar 2018 – 5 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 13 Mar; 2018
Heat detections: 621; in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 123MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar5 Apr

Play back 5 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 16 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 25 Mar 28 Mar 1 Apr

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

34km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 14 Apr.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,628 ha in 2016, 5,662 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,049 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (131 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

Bawlake where it started

7,534 ha reached on 13 Mar

3.8 %
Mese

5,664 ha reached on 13 Mar

3.1 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
13 Mar	34.8 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Mar	33.7 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Mar	34.9 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Mar	35.2 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Mar	34.2 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
18 Mar	35.9 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Mar	36.2 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Mar	35.9 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Mar	36.1 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Mar	36.9 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Mar	35.9 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar	37.9 °C	24 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Mar	37.6 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Mar	37.5 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Mar	37.2 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Mar	35.9 °C	31 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Mar	35.4 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Mar	35.2 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Mar	34.9 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
1 Apr	35.9 °C	34 %	33 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 18
2 Apr	34.8 °C	40 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Apr	33.9 °C	42 %	30 km/h	11.5 mm	Very low 4
4 Apr	33.2 °C	49 %	31 km/h	1.8 mm	Low 7
5 Apr	32.5 °C	48 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	Low 10
6 Apr after	34.7 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
7 Apr after	34.1 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 21
8 Apr after	29.4 °C	48 %	27 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 18
9 Apr after	35.6 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
10 Apr after	36.3 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
11 Apr after	37.4 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 25
12 Apr after	38.4 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Apr after	38.6 °C	33 %	43 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
14 Apr after	37.6 °C	35 %	35 km/h	2.8 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Mar 2018

After · 12 Apr 2018

Before After

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 · 621Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bawlake fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2018 to 5 April 2018 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 March 2018 to 29 March 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,125 hectares (131.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bawlake (7,534 ha, 3.8 %); Mese (5,664 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 29 March 2018 → 5 April 2018.
26 October 2026 Start date: 17 March 2018 → 13 March 2018.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 March 2018 to 29 March 2018. 621 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 2020, 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.

Where it burned