How long did the Kyaukse fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2016 and 24 March 2016: 12 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 3,810 hectares (38.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kyaukse (3,830 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 50 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2016-03-13 → 2016-03-24

Kyaukse fire, March 2016 Kyaukse

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2016, 06:13 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2016 in Kyaukse, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,810 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Mandalay since 2016 (of 69 with a page). Number 38 in Myanmar in 2016, of 157.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kyaukse · 2019 Kyaukse · 2026 Ywangan · 2025 Lawksawk · 2025

Burnt area: 3,810ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 13 Mar 2016 – 24 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 13 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 151; in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 186MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar24 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 20 Mar 22 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

34°high

50km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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

Kyaukse where it started

3,830 ha

2.0 %

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.

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)
13 Mar	32.7 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Mar	33.9 °C	21 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Mar	33.7 °C	16 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
16 Mar	32.2 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Mar	32.2 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Mar	32.0 °C	24 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Mar	31.8 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
20 Mar	32.2 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Mar	32.7 °C	28 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Mar	31.1 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
23 Mar	32.1 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar	32.5 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Mar after	34.0 °C	21 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Mar after	33.4 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Mar after	33.1 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Mar after	31.9 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Mar after	30.2 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Mar after	32.5 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
31 Mar after	32.7 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
1 Apr after	31.0 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
2 Apr after	29.8 °C	31 %	50 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
3 Apr after	32.0 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Mar 2016

After · 31 Mar 2016

Before After

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 · 151Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kyaukse fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2016 and 24 March 2016: 12 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 3,810 hectares (38.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kyaukse (3,830 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 50 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 151 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.

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.

Where it burned