Lawksawk fire, 28 February 2021 Lawksawk
The fire started on 28 February 2021 in Lawksawk, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,390 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 574th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 134 in Myanmar in 2021, of 190.
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- Burnt area
- 2,390ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 28 Feb 2021 – 15 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Feb
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 70
- in a single hotspot: 64 MW
- Average daily power
- 96MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,462 ha in 2016, 1,884 ha in 2017, 1,104 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,259 ha that had burned before.
- 1,685 ha Lawksawk fire, March 2017 3,542 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,462 ha Lawksawk fire, March 2016 2,874 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 201 ha Lawksawk fire, March 2019 3,888 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 161 ha Lawksawk fire, March 2019 2,209 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
-
Lawksawk where it started2,398 ha reached on 28 Feb0.5 %
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.
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 · 70Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 17,068 haLawksawk23 February 2026 · 44 days · 19 km away
- 38,375 haLawksawk20 February 2025 · 36 days · 24 km away
- 24,421 haLawksawk27 February 2026 · 14 days · 26 km away
- 36,894 haLawksawk19 February 2024 · 35 days · 27 km away
- 7,170 haMongkaing14 March 2026 · 21 days · 32 km away
- 6,966 haLawksawk13 March 2026 · 25 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lawksawk fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2021 to 15 March 2021 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 March 2021 to 8 March 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,390 hectares (23.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lawksawk (2,398 ha, 0.5 %).
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 8 March 2021 → 15 March 2021.
- Start date: 4 March 2021 → 28 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.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 March 2021 to 8 March 2021. 70 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.