How long did the Gangaw fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2016 to 17 March 2016 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 February 2016 to 10 March 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,326 hectares (43.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Matupi (3,209 ha, 0.5 %); Gangaw (991 ha, 0.4 %); Tilin (149 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.

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 · 2016-02-28 → 2016-03-17

Gangaw fire, 28 February 2016 Matupi, Gangaw, Tilin

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2016, 18:54 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2016 in Gangaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,326 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 49th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 29 in Myanmar in 2016, of 157.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.1 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: Tilin · 2024 Tilin · 2019 Gangaw · 2023 Hakha · 2021

Burnt area: 4,326ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 28 Feb 2016 – 17 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 28 Feb; 2016
Heat detections: 203; in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start: 1; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 43MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb17 Mar

Play back 17 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Feb 3 Mar 5 Mar 6 Mar 9 Mar 14 Mar 17 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

33°high

28km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 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?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

Matupi

3,209 ha reached on 1 Mar

0.5 %
Gangaw where it started

991 ha reached on 29 Feb

0.4 %
Tilin

149 ha reached on 29 Feb

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
29 Feb	27.5 °C	50 %	20 km/h	1.3 mm	Very low 1
1 Mar	28.4 °C	47 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
2 Mar	28.7 °C	45 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
3 Mar	30.2 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
4 Mar	31.4 °C	43 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
5 Mar	30.9 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
6 Mar	31.6 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
7 Mar	33.1 °C	40 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
8 Mar	32.6 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
9 Mar	31.8 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
10 Mar	31.6 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
11 Mar	34.0 °C	39 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
12 Mar	32.0 °C	38 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
13 Mar	32.9 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
14 Mar	33.4 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
15 Mar	33.3 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
16 Mar	34.7 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
17 Mar	33.0 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
18 Mar after	33.2 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
19 Mar after	32.1 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
20 Mar after	30.7 °C	40 %	23 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Feb 2016

After · 24 Mar 2016

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 · 203Every 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 Gangaw fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2016 to 17 March 2016 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 February 2016 to 10 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,326 hectares (43.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Matupi (3,209 ha, 0.5 %); Gangaw (991 ha, 0.4 %); Tilin (149 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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: 10 March 2016 → 17 March 2016.
26 October 2026 Start date: 29 February 2016 → 28 February 2016.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 February 2016 to 10 March 2016. 203 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.

Where it burned