How long did the Hakha fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2017 to 9 March 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2017 to 5 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,766 hectares (27.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Hakha (2,773 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 2017-02-23 → 2017-03-09

Hakha fire, 23 February 2017 Hakha

Out · last detection 5 Mar 2017, 06:06 UTC

The fire started on 23 February 2017 in Hakha, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,766 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 139th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 82 in Myanmar in 2017, of 145.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.3 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: Hakha · 2016 Hakha · 2021 Hakha · 2026 Gangaw · 2023

Burnt area: 2,766ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 23 Feb 2017 – 9 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 116; in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 38MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Feb9 Mar

Play back 5 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

23 Feb 25 Feb 27 Feb 2 Mar 3 Mar 4 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

34°high

29km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 11 Mar.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,549 ha in 2016.

1,549 ha Hakha fire, March 2016 4,634 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (28 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

Hakha where it started

2,773 ha reached on 23 Feb

0.6 %

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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
1 Mar	31.1 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
2 Mar	32.3 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
3 Mar	34.5 °C	26 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Mar	34.2 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Mar	32.7 °C	17 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Mar	32.2 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Mar	31.9 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.5 mm	High 28
8 Mar	28.6 °C	48 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
9 Mar	29.8 °C	47 %	26 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 19
10 Mar after	27.3 °C	49 %	25 km/h	0.9 mm	Moderate 12
11 Mar after	28.6 °C	47 %	29 km/h	2.1 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Feb 2017

After · 16 Mar 2017

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 · 116Every 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 Hakha fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 February 2017 to 9 March 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 March 2017 to 5 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,766 hectares (27.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Hakha (2,773 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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: 5 March 2017 → 9 March 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 1 March 2017 → 23 February 2017.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 March 2017 to 5 March 2017. 116 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