Hpapun fire, 31 March 2026 Hpapun
The fire started on 31 March 2026 in Hpapun, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,513 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 116th largest in Kayin since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 333 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Hpapun · 2025Hpapun · 2021Hpapun · 2018Hpapun · 2020
- Burnt area
- 2,513ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 31 Mar 2026 – 12 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 31 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 73
- in a single hotspot: 128 MW
- Average daily power
- 40MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 317 ha in 2016, 1,687 ha in 2017, 1,473 ha in 2018, 1,549 ha in 2019, 1,725 ha in 2020, 1,491 ha in 2021, 433 ha in 2022, 804 ha in 2023, 788 ha in 2024, 1,584 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,499 ha that had burned before.
- 1,301 ha Hpapun fire, March 2025 2,880 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 997 ha Hpapun fire, March 2021 5,214 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 612 ha Hpapun fire, March 2018 3,242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 569 ha Hpapun fire, February 2020 2,318 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 264 ha Mae Sariang fire, March 2025 9,508 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Mae Sariang fire, March 2016 1,356 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3 ha Mae Sariang fire, January 2021 1,173 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Hpapun fire, March 2017 3,145 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Hpapun where it started2,525 ha reached on 31 Mar0.4 %
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 2025Inside 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.
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 · CopernicusOn 3 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 192 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 100: 6.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 73Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,324 haMae Sariang แม่สะเรียง19 March 2026 · 27 days · 14 km away
- 88,742 haMae Sariang แม่สะเรียงFebruary 2019 · 53 days · 16 km away
- 45,818 haMese17 February 2024 · 36 days · 18 km away
- 14,249 haHpapun6 March 2025 · 30 days · 20 km away
- 22,264 haMae Sariang แม่สะเรียง19 March 2018 · 30 days · 29 km away
- 18,417 haMae Sariang แม่สะเรียง5 March 2017 · 28 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Hpapun fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 March 2026 to 12 April 2026 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 March 2026 to 5 April 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,513 hectares (25.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Hpapun (2,525 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 5 April 2026 → 12 April 2026.
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
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 31 March 2026 to 5 April 2026. 73 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.
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.