How long did the Mawkmai fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 February 2017 to 9 March 2017 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 February 2017 to 5 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,363 hectares (153.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mawkmai (13,244 ha, 5.4 %); Langkho (2,170 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 · 2017-02-12 → 2017-03-09

Mawkmai fire, February 2017 Mawkmai, Langkho

Out · last detection 9 Mar 2017, 06:30 UTC

The fire started on 12 February 2017 in Mawkmai, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 2 in Myanmar in 2017, of 145.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mawkmai · 2016 Mawkmai · 2024 Langkho · 2023 Shadaw · 2022

Burnt area: 15,363ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 12 Feb 2017 – 9 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 12 Feb; 2017
Heat detections: 702; in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 103MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Feb9 Mar

Play back 9 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Feb 19 Feb 23 Feb 27 Feb 3 Mar 7 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

48km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,723 ha in 2016.

1,503 ha Mawkmai fire, March 2016 6,969 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 9.7% of the area of London (154 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

Mawkmai where it started

13,244 ha reached on 16 Feb

5.4 %
Langkho

2,170 ha reached on 12 Feb

0.4 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
12 Feb	32.2 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
13 Feb	30.2 °C	33 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Feb	30.2 °C	39 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
15 Feb	28.1 °C	49 %	21 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 14
16 Feb	30.5 °C	37 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
17 Feb	30.9 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
18 Feb	30.7 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Feb	32.3 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Feb	31.0 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Feb	32.5 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Feb	33.2 °C	29 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Feb	34.3 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
24 Feb	34.4 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Feb	34.5 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Feb	33.3 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Feb	34.3 °C	21 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Feb	34.4 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Mar	34.6 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Mar	34.7 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
3 Mar	34.9 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Mar	34.9 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Mar	33.7 °C	21 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Mar	34.8 °C	22 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Mar	34.1 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Mar	33.9 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Mar	33.2 °C	38 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Mar after	32.9 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Mar after	33.8 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
12 Mar after	33.8 °C	26 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
13 Mar after	34.2 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 Mar after	35.1 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Mar after	35.4 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Mar after	35.9 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
17 Mar after	35.2 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Mar after	35.3 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
19 Mar after	34.7 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Feb 2017

After · 16 Mar 2017

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 · 702Every 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 Mawkmai fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 February 2017 to 9 March 2017 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 February 2017 to 5 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,363 hectares (153.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mawkmai (13,244 ha, 5.4 %); Langkho (2,170 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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 ↗

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: 5 March 2017 → 9 March 2017.
26 October 2026 Start date: 18 February 2017 → 12 February 2017.

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.

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 18 February 2017 to 5 March 2017. 702 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.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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