Mindon fire, February 2024 Mindon, Minhla
The fire started on 28 February 2024 in Mindon, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,792 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 17th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 12 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Mindon · 2018Mindon · 2019Mindon · 2019Mindon · 2023
- Burnt area
- 9,792ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 28 Feb 2024 – 11 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 356
- in a single hotspot: 223 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 79MW
- 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 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.1 mm on 21 Mar.
This area had burned before
67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,340 ha in 2016, 2,762 ha in 2017, 3,097 ha in 2018, 2,801 ha in 2019, 1,658 ha in 2020, 471 ha in 2021, 258 ha in 2022, 477 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,543 ha that had burned before.
- 1,993 ha Mindon fire, March 2018 4,276 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,227 ha Mindon fire, April 2019 2,061 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 367 ha Mindon fire, April 2019 2,908 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 322 ha Mindon fire, April 2023 4,284 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 316 ha Mindon fire, April 2020 5,686 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
-
Mindon where it started8,600 ha3.4 %
-
1,253 ha0.5 %
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.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 23 Feb | 34.0 °C | 36 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 24 Feb | 35.6 °C | 28 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 25 Feb | 36.8 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Feb | 36.9 °C | 27 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Feb | 37.8 °C | 25 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 28 Feb | 36.2 °C | 25 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 29 Feb | 37.1 °C | 23 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 1 Mar | 36.3 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Mar | 37.3 °C | 25 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 3 Mar | 37.1 °C | 25 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 4 Mar | 37.6 °C | 28 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Mar | 38.5 °C | 25 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 6 Mar | 37.3 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 7 Mar | 38.4 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Mar | 39.1 °C | 23 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 9 Mar | 36.7 °C | 22 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 10 Mar | 37.6 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 11 Mar | 38.4 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Mar after | 35.0 °C | 28 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 13 Mar after | 36.9 °C | 30 % | 45 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Mar after | 37.8 °C | 28 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Mar after | 38.2 °C | 29 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 16 Mar after | 39.3 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 17 Mar after | 39.6 °C | 26 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 18 Mar after | 40.2 °C | 26 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 19 Mar after | 39.6 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Mar after | 39.4 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Mar after | 35.3 °C | 32 % | 55 km/h | 11.1 mm | Moderate 12 |
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 13 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 35: 2.3 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 · 356Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,923 haMindonFebruary 2025 · 9 days · 3 km away
- 6,098 haMindon26 February 2026 · 9 days · 7 km away
- 6,118 haMinhla12 March 2026 · 11 days · 15 km away
- 8,345 haMinhla10 March 2026 · 14 days · 17 km away
- 6,106 haMindonFebruary 2017 · 10 days · 20 km away
- 10,271 haMinhlaFebruary 2026 · 10 days · 23 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mindon fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 February 2024 and 11 March 2024: 13 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 9,792 hectares (97.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mindon (8,600 ha, 3.4 %); Minhla (1,253 ha, 0.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 356 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.
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.