Skip to content
worldfires
en
MM · Myanmar · →

Hakha fire, 4 April 2023 Hakha, Matupi

Out · last detection 27 Apr 2023, 19:02 UTC

The fire started on 4 April 2023 in Hakha, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,329 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 12 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hakha · 2016Hakha · 2019Hakha · 2021Hakha · 2021

Burnt area
12,329ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
4 Apr 2023 – 28 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
4 Apr
2023
Heat detections
482
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
103MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Apr28 Apr
27 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2023 · 41 MW · 10 6 Apr 2023 · 12 MW · 3 7 Apr 2023 · 15 MW · 4 8 Apr 2023 · 25 MW · 11 9 Apr 2023 · 56 MW · 28 10 Apr 2023 · 129 MW · 71 11 Apr 2023 · 57 MW · 27 12 Apr 2023 · 422 MW · 42 13 Apr 2023 · 109 MW · 43 14 Apr 2023 · 231 MW · 48 15 Apr 2023 · 252 MW · 92 16 Apr 2023 · 139 MW · 28 17 Apr 2023 · 55 MW · 12 18 Apr 2023 · 116 MW · 20 19 Apr 2023 · 13 MW · 3 20 Apr 2023 · 313 MW · 30 21 Apr 2023 · 57 MW · 5 22 Apr 2023 · 8 MW · 2 26 Apr 2023 · 3 MW · 2 27 Apr 2023 · 1 MW · 1
5 Apr 8 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 17 Apr 20 Apr 26 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
39km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 5 May.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,063 ha in 2016, 461 ha in 2018, 1,482 ha in 2019, 1,207 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,444 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (123 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. Hakha where it started
    11,042 ha reached on 5 Apr
    2.6 %
  2. Matupi
    1,332 ha reached on 8 Apr
    0.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area0.70 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.70 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
4 Apr 31.9 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
5 Apr 33.1 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Apr 34.5 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Apr 35.3 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
8 Apr 35.6 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Apr 36.5 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Apr 36.4 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
11 Apr 36.4 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Apr 36.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Apr 36.3 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Apr 38.2 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Apr 38.0 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Apr 36.7 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Apr 38.1 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Apr 38.1 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Apr 37.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 35
20 Apr 37.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.9 mm High 28
21 Apr 34.9 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
22 Apr 34.7 °C 34 % 37 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 18
23 Apr 35.0 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
24 Apr 32.1 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
25 Apr 33.3 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Apr 36.2 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.9 mm High 26
27 Apr 36.9 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Apr 37.0 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
29 Apr after 36.3 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
30 Apr after 34.9 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 May after 34.9 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
2 May after 31.3 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
3 May after 32.9 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
4 May after 29.5 °C 55 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 21
5 May after 34.9 °C 46 % 32 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Mar 2023
After · 5 May 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 106 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak106 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10151 µg/m³
Optical depth1.68
56789101112131415161718192021222324
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 482Every 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 Hakha fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 April 2023 to 28 April 2023 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 April 2023 to 21 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,329 hectares (123.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Hakha (11,042 ha, 2.6 %); Matupi (1,332 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 39 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 21 April 2023 → 28 April 2023.
  2. Start date: 7 April 2023 → 4 April 2023.

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?

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 7 April 2023 to 21 April 2023. 482 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 2025, 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.