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Hpapun fire, 8 April 2019 Hpapun

Out · last detection 18 Apr 2019, 07:32 UTC

The fire started on 8 April 2019 in Hpapun, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,702 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 100th largest in Kayin since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 90 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hpapun · 2026Hpapun · 2026

Burnt area
2,702ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
8 Apr 2019 – 17 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Apr
2019
Heat detections
64
in a single hotspot: 106 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
158MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Apr17 Apr
18 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

8 Apr 2019 · 345 MW · 12 9 Apr 2019 · 43 MW · 4 13 Apr 2019 · 435 MW · 26 14 Apr 2019 · 163 MW · 3 15 Apr 2019 · 58 MW · 3 16 Apr 2019 · 9 MW · 2 17 Apr 2019 · 182 MW · 3 18 Apr 2019 · 26 MW · 4
8 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 17 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

40°high
32km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 24 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Hpapun where it started
    2,712 ha
    0.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
8 Apr 38.2 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Apr 38.6 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Apr 38.8 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Apr 39.7 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Apr 39.1 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Apr 39.1 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 38.9 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr 39.1 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Apr 39.1 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Apr 39.5 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Apr after 39.7 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Apr after 39.4 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Apr after 39.4 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Apr after 38.5 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Apr after 39.2 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Apr after 39.3 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Apr after 39.9 °C 42 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Apr 2019
After · 24 Apr 2019

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 · 64Every 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 Hpapun fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 April 2019 and 17 April 2019: 10 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,702 hectares (27.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hpapun (2,712 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 64 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 2020, 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.