Lawksawk fire, March 2024 Lawksawk
The fire started on 11 March 2024 in Lawksawk, Myanmar (Burma), and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,621 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 433th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 723 with a page). Number 91 in Myanmar (Burma) in 2024, of 161.
- Burnt area
- 2,621ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 11 Mar 2024 – 20 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Mar
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 145
- in a single hotspot: 47 MW
- Energy released
- 652MW
- sum of detected power
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
70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 821 ha in 2017, 490 ha in 2019, 357 ha in 2020, 454 ha in 2021, 1,097 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,847 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
Lawksawk where it started2,633 ha reached on 4 Mar0.5 %
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.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 13 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 43: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 145Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 38,375 haLawksawk26 February 2025 · 23 days · 2 km away
- 17,068 haLawksawk1 March 2026 · 31 days · 6 km away
- 7,170 haMongkaing14 March 2026 · 14 days · 22 km away
- 9,954 haYwangan8 March 2025 · 14 days · 30 km away
- 24,421 haLawksawk27 February 2026 · 14 days · 36 km away
- 36,894 haLawksawk26 February 2024 · 21 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lawksawk fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2024 and 20 March 2024: 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 2,621 hectares (26.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lawksawk (2,633 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 (Burma) (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.
Report an error
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.