Langkho fire, 22 February 2021 Langkho
The fire started on 22 February 2021 in Langkho, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,281 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 27th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 7 in Myanmar in 2021, of 190.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 17,281ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 20days
- 22 Feb 2021 – 13 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 22 Feb
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 726
- in a single hotspot: 69 MW
- Danger at start
- 6
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 143MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,286 ha in 2016, 3,023 ha in 2017, 457 ha in 2018, 4,418 ha in 2019, 4,795 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,196 ha that had burned before.
- 3,207 ha Langkho fire, February 2020 3,524 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,888 ha Langkho fire, April 2019 3,215 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,805 ha Langkho fire, February 2017 3,306 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 457 ha Langkho fire, March 2018 2,280 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 439 ha Langkho fire, February 2017 2,158 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 361 ha Langkho fire, February 2019 2,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 128 ha Langkho fire, February 2017 4,469 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Langkho where it started17,367 ha reached on 23 Feb3.3 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Feb | 31.0 °C | 41 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 6 |
| 23 Feb | 32.4 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 10 |
| 24 Feb | 32.2 °C | 41 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 25 Feb | 32.7 °C | 31 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 26 Feb | 32.2 °C | 27 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 27 Feb | 31.0 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 28 Feb | 32.3 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 1 Mar | 33.3 °C | 25 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 2 Mar | 33.2 °C | 22 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Mar | 33.6 °C | 27 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 4 Mar | 34.6 °C | 16 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 5 Mar | 33.5 °C | 15 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 6 Mar | 33.4 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 7 Mar | 33.4 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 8 Mar | 33.6 °C | 23 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 9 Mar | 34.4 °C | 22 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Mar | 33.9 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 11 Mar | 34.4 °C | 27 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 12 Mar | 34.3 °C | 26 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 13 Mar | 35.6 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 14 Mar after | 35.5 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Mar after | 36.2 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 16 Mar after | 36.5 °C | 20 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 17 Mar after | 37.0 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Mar after | 37.7 °C | 20 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 19 Mar after | 38.0 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 20 Mar after | 38.2 °C | 23 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 21 Mar after | 39.0 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 22 Mar after | 37.8 °C | 16 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 23 Mar after | 36.5 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 726Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Langkho fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 February 2021 to 13 March 2021 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 February 2021 to 13 March 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,281 hectares (172.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Langkho (17,367 ha, 3.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 24 February 2021 → 22 February 2021.
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.
Report an error
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 February 2021 to 13 March 2021. 726 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.