Mese fire, 24 February 2024 Mese, Bawlake
The fire started on 24 February 2024 in Mese, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 36,428 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 5th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 3 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 36,428ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 24days
- 24 Feb 2024 – 18 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 1,579
- in a single hotspot: 34 MW
- Danger at start
- 28
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 208MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,292 ha in 2016, 15,336 ha in 2017, 17,439 ha in 2018, 15,378 ha in 2019, 23,084 ha in 2020, 21,576 ha in 2021, 8,809 ha in 2022, 9,175 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 35,502 ha that had burned before.
- 8,951 ha Mese fire, March 2016 14,694 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8,448 ha Bawlake fire, March 2018 13,125 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,835 ha Bawlake fire, February 2021 21,859 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,569 ha Bawlake fire, March 2016 7,288 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,542 ha Mese fire, January 2020 7,069 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,368 ha Mese fire, February 2021 5,725 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,878 ha Mese fire, February 2017 4,593 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,859 ha Bawlake fire, March 2019 4,965 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Mese where it started19,008 ha10 %
-
17,624 ha9.0 %
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Feb | 34.0 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 18 Feb | 33.8 °C | 25 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 19 Feb | 33.1 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 20 Feb | 32.6 °C | 32 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 21 Feb | 32.3 °C | 33 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 22 Feb | 32.8 °C | 31 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Feb | 33.3 °C | 38 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 24 Feb | 34.1 °C | 33 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 25 Feb | 35.6 °C | 27 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 26 Feb | 35.4 °C | 29 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 27 Feb | 36.3 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Feb | 36.2 °C | 28 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Feb | 35.5 °C | 30 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Mar | 35.5 °C | 30 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 2 Mar | 36.0 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 3 Mar | 35.6 °C | 33 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 4 Mar | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 5 Mar | 36.0 °C | 30 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 6 Mar | 35.8 °C | 31 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Mar | 35.2 °C | 29 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 8 Mar | 36.4 °C | 32 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 9 Mar | 36.5 °C | 31 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Mar | 36.3 °C | 35 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Mar | 36.4 °C | 29 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 12 Mar | 35.5 °C | 32 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 13 Mar | 35.9 °C | 28 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 14 Mar | 34.8 °C | 29 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Mar | 35.5 °C | 28 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Mar | 36.1 °C | 31 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 17 Mar | 35.6 °C | 37 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 18 Mar | 36.9 °C | 34 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 19 Mar after | 37.2 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 20 Mar after | 36.9 °C | 23 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 21 Mar after | 32.8 °C | 42 % | 31 km/h | 4.2 mm | Low 7 |
| 22 Mar after | 33.6 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 3.3 mm | Low 10 |
| 23 Mar after | 35.1 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 24 Mar after | 36.4 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 25 Mar after | 36.6 °C | 20 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 26 Mar after | 37.2 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 27 Mar after | 37.9 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 28 Mar after | 36.8 °C | 29 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 29 Mar after | 37.2 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 30 Mar after | 37.7 °C | 28 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 31 Mar after | 38.2 °C | 25 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 1 Apr after | 38.6 °C | 26 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 2 Apr after | 38.8 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 3 Apr after | 39.3 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
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 6 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 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 · 1,579Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mese fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 February 2024 and 18 March 2024: 24 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 36,428 hectares (364.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mese (19,008 ha, 10 %); Bawlake (17,624 ha, 9.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,579 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.