How long did the Bawlake fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2024 to 13 March 2024 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 February 2024 to 6 March 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,160 hectares (81.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bawlake (5,187 ha, 2.6 %); Hpasawng (2,871 ha, 2.0 %); Mese (139 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 · 2024-02-17 → 2024-03-13

Bawlake fire, 17 February 2024 Bawlake, Hpasawng, Mese

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2024, 06:30 UTC

The fire started on 17 February 2024 in Bawlake, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,160 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 25th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 16 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bawlake · 2016 Mese · 2025 Hpasawng · 2026 Mese · 2024

Burnt area: 8,160ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 17 Feb 2024 – 13 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 17 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 346; in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 65MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Feb13 Mar

Play back 12 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Feb 23 Feb 26 Feb 29 Feb 3 Mar 6 Mar 10 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

32km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

34% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,507 ha in 2016, 1,032 ha in 2017, 1,694 ha in 2019, 937 ha in 2020, 238 ha in 2021, 1,081 ha in 2022, 1,338 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,801 ha that had burned before.

1,507 ha Bawlake fire, March 2016 2,650 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (82 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

Bawlake where it started

5,187 ha reached on 22 Feb

2.6 %
Hpasawng

2,871 ha reached on 19 Feb

2.0 %
Mese

139 ha reached on 18 Feb

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
23 Feb	31.1 °C	38 %	20 km/h	High 25
24 Feb	32.3 °C	31 %	20 km/h	High 23
25 Feb	33.4 °C	29 %	20 km/h	High 23
26 Feb	33.2 °C	30 %	23 km/h	High 24
27 Feb	34.0 °C	32 %	20 km/h	High 25
28 Feb	34.4 °C	29 %	26 km/h	High 27
29 Feb	33.7 °C	29 %	23 km/h	High 26
1 Mar	33.6 °C	31 %	21 km/h	High 27
2 Mar	34.1 °C	28 %	26 km/h	High 29
3 Mar	33.5 °C	32 %	32 km/h	High 30
4 Mar	34.2 °C	23 %	24 km/h	High 31
5 Mar	34.0 °C	30 %	22 km/h	High 30
6 Mar	33.9 °C	32 %	20 km/h	High 31
7 Mar	33.4 °C	30 %	22 km/h	High 30
8 Mar	34.4 °C	32 %	28 km/h	High 32
9 Mar	34.5 °C	29 %	26 km/h	High 33
10 Mar	34.4 °C	33 %	26 km/h	High 33
11 Mar	34.5 °C	26 %	28 km/h	High 33
12 Mar	33.2 °C	32 %	42 km/h	High 37
13 Mar	33.8 °C	25 %	26 km/h	High 33
14 Mar after	32.8 °C	30 %	23 km/h	High 32
15 Mar after	33.4 °C	28 %	25 km/h	High 30
16 Mar after	34.0 °C	32 %	26 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Feb 2024

After · 20 Mar 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 24 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 30 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak30 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1047 µg/m³

Optical depth0.49

WHO 15

212223242526272829123456789

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 · 346Every 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 Bawlake fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 February 2024 to 13 March 2024 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 February 2024 to 6 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,160 hectares (81.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bawlake (5,187 ha, 2.6 %); Hpasawng (2,871 ha, 2.0 %); Mese (139 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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: 6 March 2024 → 13 March 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 23 February 2024 → 17 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?

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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 23 February 2024 to 6 March 2024. 346 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.

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