How long did the Lawksawk fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2020 and 12 March 2020: 9 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 2,965 hectares (29.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Lawksawk (2,978 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2020-03-04 → 2020-03-12

Lawksawk fire, 4 March 2020 Lawksawk

Out · last detection 13 Mar 2020, 18:34 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2020 in Lawksawk, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,965 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 373th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 122 in Myanmar in 2020, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lawksawk · 2019 Lawksawk · 2026 Lawksawk · 2025 Mongkaing · 2026

Burnt area: 2,965ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 4 Mar 2020 – 12 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 4 Mar; 2020
Heat detections: 145; in a single hotspot: 55 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 87MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar12 Mar

Play back 13 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 6 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 12 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

35°high

40km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 20 Mar.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 225 ha in 2017, 554 ha in 2018, 433 ha in 2019.

433 ha Lawksawk fire, March 2019 3,302 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

Lawksawk where it started

2,978 ha

0.6 %

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.

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)
4 Mar	31.3 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
5 Mar	31.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Mar	30.9 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Mar	32.4 °C	29 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Mar	32.0 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Mar	32.4 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
10 Mar	33.8 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Mar	34.4 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Mar	35.2 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Mar after	35.6 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
14 Mar after	36.0 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Mar after	35.9 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Mar after	36.1 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Mar after	34.9 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Mar after	33.2 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Mar after	34.0 °C	22 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Mar after	33.3 °C	29 %	38 km/h	2.7 mm	Moderate 18

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Feb 2020

After · 19 Mar 2020

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 · 145Every 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 Lawksawk fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2020 and 12 March 2020: 9 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 2,965 hectares (29.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Lawksawk (2,978 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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. 145 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