How long did the Minbya fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 April 2023 and 17 April 2023: 14 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 5,290 hectares (52.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Minbya (2,691 ha, 0.8 %); Paletwa (2,616 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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 · 2023-04-04 → 2023-04-17

Minbya fire, 4 April 2023 Minbya, Paletwa

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2023, 06:20 UTC

The fire started on 4 April 2023 in Minbya, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,290 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Rakhine since 2016 (of 56 with a page). Number 44 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kanpetlet · 2020

Burnt area: 5,290ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 4 Apr 2023 – 17 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 4 Apr; 2023
Heat detections: 201; in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 90MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Apr17 Apr

Play back 17 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high

49km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 20 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

Minbya where it started

2,691 ha

0.8 %
Paletwa

2,616 ha

0.3 %

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)
4 Apr	32.6 °C	26 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Apr	32.6 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Apr	34.3 °C	28 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Apr	36.0 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Apr	36.7 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Apr	36.8 °C	20 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Apr	37.1 °C	21 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Apr	36.8 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
12 Apr	36.9 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Apr	36.1 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Apr	38.0 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
15 Apr	37.7 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Apr	35.2 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Apr	34.0 °C	50 %	37 km/h	0.4 mm	High 27
18 Apr after	36.1 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Apr after	34.6 °C	44 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
20 Apr after	35.4 °C	43 %	41 km/h	3.0 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Mar 2023

After · 24 Apr 2023

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 · 201Every 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

18,538 haKanpetlet14 March 2020 · 28 days · 34 km away

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Minbya fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 April 2023 and 17 April 2023: 14 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 5,290 hectares (52.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Minbya (2,691 ha, 0.8 %); Paletwa (2,616 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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 ↗

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. 201 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