How long did the Bawlake fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2019 to 12 March 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2019 to 8 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,965 hectares (49.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bawlake (2,884 ha, 1.5 %); Mese (2,107 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2019-02-23 → 2019-03-12

Bawlake fire, 23 February 2019 Bawlake, Mese

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2019, 19:13 UTC

The fire started on 23 February 2019 in Bawlake, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,965 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 57th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 26 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.8 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…

Suggestions: Bawlake · 2016 Mese · 2016 Mese · 2025 Mese · 2024

Burnt area: 4,965ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 23 Feb 2019 – 12 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 23 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 176; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 58MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Feb12 Mar

Play back 9 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

27 Feb 1 Mar 3 Mar 4 Mar 5 Mar 7 Mar 9 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

36°high

36km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,461 ha in 2016, 1,662 ha in 2017, 823 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,419 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (50 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

2,884 ha reached on 27 Feb

1.5 %
Mese

2,107 ha reached on 1 Mar

1.2 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
1 Mar	36.3 °C	27 %	22 km/h	High 29
2 Mar	36.5 °C	30 %	23 km/h	High 32
3 Mar	36.2 °C	28 %	21 km/h	High 31
4 Mar	36.5 °C	29 %	32 km/h	High 33
5 Mar	35.8 °C	30 %	35 km/h	High 35
6 Mar	35.2 °C	34 %	35 km/h	High 32
7 Mar	34.4 °C	36 %	30 km/h	High 29
8 Mar	35.8 °C	33 %	36 km/h	High 32
9 Mar	35.5 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Very high 39
10 Mar	35.3 °C	28 %	22 km/h	High 33
11 Mar	36.4 °C	23 %	22 km/h	High 34
12 Mar	36.7 °C	26 %	20 km/h	High 35
13 Mar after	37.6 °C	24 %	21 km/h	High 34
14 Mar after	37.7 °C	24 %	22 km/h	High 35
15 Mar after	37.3 °C	32 %	22 km/h	High 34
16 Mar after	38.5 °C	29 %	24 km/h	High 34
17 Mar after	38.5 °C	24 %	24 km/h	High 34
18 Mar after	38.5 °C	29 %	32 km/h	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Feb 2019

After · 19 Mar 2019

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 · 176Every 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 23 February 2019 to 12 March 2019 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2019 to 8 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,965 hectares (49.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bawlake (2,884 ha, 1.5 %); Mese (2,107 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

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: 8 March 2019 → 12 March 2019.
26 October 2026 Start date: 1 March 2019 → 23 February 2019.

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.

Report an error

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 March 2019 to 8 March 2019. 176 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.

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