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Hpapun fire, 28 March 2026 Hpapun

Out · last detection 6 Apr 2026, 07:21 UTC

The fire started on 28 March 2026 in Hpapun, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,416 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 126th largest in Kayin since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 353 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hpapun · 2025Mese · 2024Mae Sariang · 2019Mae Sariang · 2026

Burnt area
2,416ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
28 Mar 2026 – 5 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Mar
2026
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 87 MW
Average daily power
206MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Mar5 Apr
6 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

31 Mar 2026 · 558 MW · 25 1 Apr 2026 · 260 MW · 11 2 Apr 2026 · 245 MW · 6 4 Apr 2026 · 12 MW · 2 5 Apr 2026 · 23 MW · 3 6 Apr 2026 · 139 MW · 5
31 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 209 ha in 2020, 52 ha in 2021, 31 ha in 2022, 980 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,105 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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
    2,436 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 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

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Mar 2026
After · 12 Apr 2026

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 3 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 277 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 136: 9.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak277 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10289 µg/m³
Optical depth1.80
26272829303112345678
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 · 58Every 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 28 March 2026 and 5 April 2026: 9 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 2,416 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hpapun (2,436 ha, 0.4 %).
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. 58 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • 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.