How long did the Matupi fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2019 and 16 March 2019: 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 3,233 hectares (32.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Matupi (3,254 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.

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 · 2019-03-08 → 2019-03-16

Matupi fire, 8 March 2019 Matupi

Out · last detection 16 Mar 2019, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 8 March 2019 in Matupi, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,233 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 107th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 61 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Matupi · 2017 Tilin · 2024 Tilin · 2019 Gangaw · 2023

Burnt area: 3,233ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 8 Mar 2019 – 16 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 145; in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start: 2; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 40MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 16 Mar 2019

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Mar16 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

8 Mar 10 Mar 12 Mar 14 Mar 16 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

34°high

37km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,571 ha in 2017.

1,571 ha Matupi fire, February 2017 4,937 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Matupi where it started

3,254 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)
8 Mar	27.9 °C	51 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 2
9 Mar	29.5 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
10 Mar	30.7 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
11 Mar	31.3 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
12 Mar	32.5 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
13 Mar	33.1 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
14 Mar	33.4 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
15 Mar	33.9 °C	39 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
16 Mar	33.1 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
17 Mar after	31.9 °C	32 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
18 Mar after	32.0 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
19 Mar after	31.6 °C	39 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
20 Mar after	31.6 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
21 Mar after	32.4 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
22 Mar after	33.5 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
23 Mar after	34.0 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
24 Mar after	34.4 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Mar after	34.0 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
26 Mar after	34.7 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Mar 2019

After · 23 Mar 2019

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 Matupi fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2019 and 16 March 2019: 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 3,233 hectares (32.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Matupi (3,254 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, class Moderate.
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