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Indaw fire, 5 April 2023 Katha, Indaw, Tigyaing

Out · last detection 18 Apr 2023, 20:10 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2023 in Indaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,721 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Saigang since 2016 (of 100 with a page). Number 36 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Katha · 2023Indaw · 2023Tigyaing · 2026

Burnt area
5,721ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
5 Apr 2023 – 17 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
5 Apr
2023
Heat detections
287
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
76MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr17 Apr
18 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2023 · 9 MW · 2 6 Apr 2023 · 9 MW · 3 7 Apr 2023 · 46 MW · 17 8 Apr 2023 · 58 MW · 16 9 Apr 2023 · 136 MW · 44 10 Apr 2023 · 286 MW · 76 11 Apr 2023 · 222 MW · 51 12 Apr 2023 · 86 MW · 21 13 Apr 2023 · 19 MW · 4 14 Apr 2023 · 13 MW · 4 15 Apr 2023 · 7 MW · 2 16 Apr 2023 · 61 MW · 9 17 Apr 2023 · 61 MW · 11 18 Apr 2023 · 45 MW · 9
5 Apr 7 Apr 9 Apr 10 Apr 11 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

38°high
30km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 23 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 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. Katha
    2,540 ha
    1.1 %
  2. Indaw where it started
    2,391 ha
    1.3 %
  3. Tigyaing
    812 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

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)
5 Apr 29.9 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
6 Apr 32.2 °C 31 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
7 Apr 34.0 °C 27 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
8 Apr 34.3 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Apr 34.5 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Apr 35.1 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Apr 34.8 °C 28 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Apr 34.5 °C 29 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Apr 34.8 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Apr 35.2 °C 28 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Apr 36.2 °C 27 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Apr 36.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Apr 37.6 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
18 Apr after 37.4 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Apr after 37.3 °C 32 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Apr after 36.5 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
21 Apr after 34.9 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 33
22 Apr after 32.2 °C 38 % 22 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 21
23 Apr after 32.3 °C 38 % 27 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 13

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2023
After · 24 Apr 2023

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 · 287Every 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 Indaw fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2023 and 17 April 2023: 13 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 5,721 hectares (57.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Katha (2,540 ha, 1.1 %); Indaw (2,391 ha, 1.3 %); Tigyaing (812 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 30 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 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. 287 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.