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Hakha fire, 4 April 2023 Hakha

Out · last detection 20 Apr 2023, 19:33 UTC

The fire started on 4 April 2023 in Hakha, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,000 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 27th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 19 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hakha · 2020Hakha · 2023Hakha · 2026Hakha · 2017

Burnt area
8,000ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
4 Apr 2023 – 20 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Apr
2023
Heat detections
385
in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
231MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Apr20 Apr
20 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

6 Apr 2023 · 8 MW · 2 7 Apr 2023 · 28 MW · 5 8 Apr 2023 · 34 MW · 5 9 Apr 2023 · 17 MW · 8 10 Apr 2023 · 168 MW · 14 11 Apr 2023 · 85 MW · 17 12 Apr 2023 · 697 MW · 50 13 Apr 2023 · 405 MW · 56 14 Apr 2023 · 1,281 MW · 109 15 Apr 2023 · 569 MW · 77 16 Apr 2023 · 73 MW · 17 17 Apr 2023 · 52 MW · 15 18 Apr 2023 · 1 MW · 1 19 Apr 2023 · 13 MW · 3 20 Apr 2023 · 39 MW · 6
6 Apr 9 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 15 Apr 18 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

35°high
42km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 22 Apr.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 669 ha in 2016, 16 ha in 2017, 150 ha in 2019, 132 ha in 2020, 2,233 ha in 2021, 147 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,804 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (80 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
    8,037 ha reached on 6 Apr
    1.9 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
9 Apr 32.7 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Apr 33.0 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
11 Apr 33.0 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Apr 32.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Apr 32.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Apr 34.4 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Apr 34.3 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Apr 33.4 °C 31 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Apr 34.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
18 Apr 34.7 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Apr 34.1 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
20 Apr 34.0 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
21 Apr after 31.7 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
22 Apr after 31.2 °C 34 % 40 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Mar 2023
After · 27 Apr 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 156 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 79: 5.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak156 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10224 µg/m³
Optical depth1.63
789101112131415161718192021
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 · 385Every 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 20 April 2023 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 April 2023 to 18 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,000 hectares (80.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hakha (8,037 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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: 18 April 2023 → 20 April 2023.
  2. Start date: 9 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.

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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 9 April 2023 to 18 April 2023. 385 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.