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Kani fire, April 2019 Mingin, Kani

Out · last detection 1 May 2019, 06:50 UTC

The fire started on 21 April 2019 in Kani, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 79th largest in Saigang since 2016 (of 100 with a page). Number 137 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.3 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: Mingin · 2017Kani · 2023Kale · 2023

Burnt area
2,252ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
21 Apr 2019 – 30 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
21 Apr
2019
Heat detections
93
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Average daily power
31MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Apr30 Apr
1 May 2019

How it evolved, day by day

21 Apr 2019 · 18 MW · 11 23 Apr 2019 · 3 MW · 3 24 Apr 2019 · 60 MW · 13 25 Apr 2019 · 82 MW · 19 26 Apr 2019 · 60 MW · 24 27 Apr 2019 · 23 MW · 6 28 Apr 2019 · 3 MW · 2 29 Apr 2019 · 22 MW · 6 30 Apr 2019 · 24 MW · 6 1 May 2019 · 17 MW · 3
21 Apr 24 Apr 25 Apr 26 Apr 28 Apr 30 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

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,234 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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. 1,921 ha
    0.5 %
  2. Kani where it started
    339 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Apr 2019
After · 7 May 2019

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 · 93Every 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 Kani fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 April 2019 and 30 April 2019: 10 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 2,252 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mingin (1,921 ha, 0.5 %); Kani (339 ha, 0.1 %).
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

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. 93 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.

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.