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Hpruso fire, 27 March 2024 Hpruso

Out · last detection 8 Apr 2024, 06:24 UTC

The fire started on 27 March 2024 in Hpruso, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,653 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 48th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 35 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.

Compare with…
Burnt area
5,653ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
27 Mar 2024 – 7 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Mar
2024
Heat detections
270
in a single hotspot: 389 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
686MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Mar7 Apr
8 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

27 Mar 2024 · 980 MW · 56 28 Mar 2024 · 593 MW · 35 29 Mar 2024 · 606 MW · 22 30 Mar 2024 · 2,797 MW · 41 31 Mar 2024 · 1 MW · 2 1 Apr 2024 · 590 MW · 40 2 Apr 2024 · 2,809 MW · 32 3 Apr 2024 · 458 MW · 27 4 Apr 2024 · 31 MW · 5 5 Apr 2024 · 12 MW · 2 6 Apr 2024 · 2 MW · 1 7 Apr 2024 · 25 MW · 6 8 Apr 2024 · 15 MW · 1
27 Mar 29 Mar 31 Mar 2 Apr 4 Apr 6 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 12 Apr.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,228 ha in 2016, 587 ha in 2017, 249 ha in 2019, 1,881 ha in 2020, 1,095 ha in 2021, 16 ha in 2022, 1,230 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,489 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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. Hpruso where it started
    5,684 ha reached on 27 Mar
    3.4 %

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 area0.11 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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)
27 Mar 33.3 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Mar 33.0 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Mar 31.4 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Mar 32.3 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Mar 32.8 °C 27 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Apr 32.8 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Apr 33.6 °C 26 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Apr 33.8 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Apr 35.8 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Apr 35.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Apr 35.6 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Apr 35.3 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
8 Apr after 35.4 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Apr after 36.6 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
10 Apr after 34.6 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Apr after 33.6 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
12 Apr after 33.2 °C 28 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Mar 2024
After · 14 Apr 2024

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 29 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10172 µg/m³
Optical depth1.80
252627282930311234567
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 · 270Every 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 Hpruso fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2024 to 7 April 2024 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2024 to 4 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,653 hectares (56.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Hpruso (5,684 ha, 3.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 April 2024 → 7 April 2024.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 March 2024 to 4 April 2024. 270 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.