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Mese fire, 21 February 2019 Mese

Out · last measured on 27 Feb 2019

The fire started on 21 February 2019 in Mese, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,520 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 152th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 103 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mese · 2018Mae Sariang · 2019Mese · 2024Mese · 2016

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
2,520ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
21 Feb 2019 – 27 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
21 Feb
2019

Where it burned

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,370 ha in 2016, 1,310 ha in 2017, 582 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,023 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

  1. Mese where it started
    2,532 ha
    1.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.96 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.96 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2020, 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

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Feb 2019
After · 6 Mar 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Mese fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 February 2019 and 27 February 2019: 7 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 2,520 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mese (2,532 ha, 1.4 %).
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.