How long did the Mabein fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2024 to 25 March 2024 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 March 2024 to 18 March 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,322 hectares (193.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mabein (14,194 ha, 2.8 %); Thabeikkyin (5,198 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 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 · 2024-02-28 → 2024-03-25

Mabein fire, February 2024 Mabein, Thabeikkyin

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2024, 19:56 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2024 in Mabein, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,322 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 23th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 6 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mabein · 2026 Mabein · 2026 Mabein · 2026 Thabeikkyin · 2024

Burnt area: 19,322ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 28 Feb 2024 – 25 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 28 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 634; in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 103MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb25 Mar

Play back 25 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

28 Feb 3 Mar 7 Mar 11 Mar 12 Mar 15 Mar 19 Mar 24 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

37°high

39km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 31 Mar.

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 260 ha in 2019, 362 ha in 2020, 628 ha in 2022, 1,363 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,485 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (193 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

Mabein where it started

14,194 ha reached on 28 Feb

2.8 %
Thabeikkyin

5,198 ha reached on 7 Mar

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)
28 Feb	33.4 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 Feb	33.0 °C	31 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Mar	33.3 °C	31 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
2 Mar	34.0 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
3 Mar	34.7 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
4 Mar	35.0 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
5 Mar	35.1 °C	29 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
6 Mar	34.7 °C	22 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
7 Mar	34.9 °C	25 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Mar	35.5 °C	23 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Mar	34.8 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Mar	35.3 °C	25 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Mar	35.7 °C	26 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Mar	35.8 °C	29 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Mar	35.8 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Mar	35.8 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Mar	35.4 °C	32 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Mar	36.2 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Mar	35.9 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Mar	36.8 °C	27 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Mar	36.9 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Mar	36.6 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Mar	34.2 °C	40 %	39 km/h	3.3 mm	Moderate 13
22 Mar	29.4 °C	47 %	35 km/h	3.6 mm	Very low 5
23 Mar	33.0 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
24 Mar	33.1 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	High 21
25 Mar	34.8 °C	34 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
26 Mar after	35.7 °C	34 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Mar after	35.0 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
28 Mar after	35.2 °C	33 %	21 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
29 Mar after	35.6 °C	35 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
30 Mar after	35.4 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
31 Mar after	36.0 °C	34 %	40 km/h	1.0 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Feb 2024

After · 1 Apr 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 15 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 78 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 60: 4.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak78 µg/m³

Days over the guideline20 days

PM10114 µg/m³

Optical depth2.21

WHO 15

23456789101112131415161718192021

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 634Every 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 Mabein fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2024 to 25 March 2024 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 March 2024 to 18 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,322 hectares (193.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mabein (14,194 ha, 2.8 %); Thabeikkyin (5,198 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 18 March 2024 → 25 March 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 4 March 2024 → 28 February 2024.

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.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 March 2024 to 18 March 2024. 634 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