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MM · Myanmar · –

Hpasawng fire, 19 March 2026 Hpasawng

Out · last detection 9 Apr 2026, 06:25 UTC

The fire started on 19 March 2026 in Hpasawng, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 90 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…
Burnt area
6,456ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
19 Mar 2026 – 9 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Mar
2026
Heat detections
128
in a single hotspot: 236 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
68MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Mar9 Apr
9 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

19 Mar 2026 · 104 MW · 2 22 Mar 2026 · 15 MW · 1 23 Mar 2026 · 240 MW · 4 24 Mar 2026 · 30 MW · 2 25 Mar 2026 · 19 MW · 4 26 Mar 2026 · 23 MW · 4 27 Mar 2026 · 51 MW · 10 28 Mar 2026 · 47 MW · 18 29 Mar 2026 · 37 MW · 12 30 Mar 2026 · 34 MW · 5 31 Mar 2026 · 71 MW · 14 1 Apr 2026 · 101 MW · 16 2 Apr 2026 · 82 MW · 21 3 Apr 2026 · 25 MW · 6 4 Apr 2026 · 72 MW · 4 6 Apr 2026 · 27 MW · 2 8 Apr 2026 · 238 MW · 2 9 Apr 2026 · 5 MW · 1
23 Mar 29 Mar 2 Apr 8 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

37°high
39km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 18 Apr.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,134 ha in 2019, 109 ha in 2021, 27 ha in 2022, 1,331 ha in 2024, 41 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,287 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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. Hpasawng where it started
    6,492 ha reached on 19 Mar
    4.5 %

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 area0.25 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.25 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)
19 Mar 33.9 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
20 Mar 32.5 °C 46 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
21 Mar 33.9 °C 52 % 28 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 16
22 Mar 33.8 °C 41 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
23 Mar 34.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
24 Mar 34.6 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
25 Mar 35.0 °C 37 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Mar 35.6 °C 38 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Mar 36.1 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Mar 36.6 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Mar 36.7 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Mar 36.6 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
31 Mar 37.1 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Apr 36.9 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
2 Apr 37.2 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
3 Apr 37.4 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
4 Apr 36.4 °C 42 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
5 Apr 36.2 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
6 Apr 35.9 °C 45 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Apr 34.1 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
8 Apr 36.0 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
9 Apr 35.2 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Apr after 35.2 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
11 Apr after 35.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Apr after 36.6 °C 35 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Apr after 37.0 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Apr after 36.0 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Apr after 35.8 °C 47 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
16 Apr after 35.6 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Apr after 36.8 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Apr after 34.9 °C 51 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Mar 2026
After · 16 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 154 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 73: 4.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak154 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10164 µg/m³
Optical depth1.07
23 Mar27 Mar31 Mar4 Apr8 Apr
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 · 128Every 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 Hpasawng fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 March 2026 to 9 April 2026 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 March 2026 to 6 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,456 hectares (64.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hpasawng (6,492 ha, 4.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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: 6 April 2026 → 9 April 2026.
  2. Start date: 25 March 2026 → 19 March 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 25 March 2026 to 6 April 2026. 128 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.