How long did the Mindon fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2026 and 21 March 2026: 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 6,737 hectares (67.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mindon (6,771 ha, 2.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2026-02-26 → 2026-03-21

Mindon fire, 26 February 2026 Mindon

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2026, 07:21 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2026 in Mindon, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,737 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 21th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 87 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mindon · 2019 Mindon · 2021 Mindon · 2022 Mindon · 2019

Burnt area: 6,737ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 26 Feb 2026 – 21 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 26 Feb; 2026
Heat detections: 131; in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 57MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb21 Mar

Play back 21 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Feb 2 Mar 5 Mar 8 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 17 Mar 21 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

37°high

53km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 42 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,140 ha in 2016, 574 ha in 2017, 1,371 ha in 2018, 2,797 ha in 2019, 1,683 ha in 2020, 1,744 ha in 2021, 2,587 ha in 2022, 1,155 ha in 2023, 1,034 ha in 2024, 1,110 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,402 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.3% of the area of London (67 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

Mindon where it started

6,771 ha

2.6 %

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 area0.14 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
26 Feb	33.4 °C	25 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Feb	31.8 °C	24 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Feb	32.1 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Mar	33.1 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Mar	34.7 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Mar	32.4 °C	41 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 Mar	32.7 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Mar	34.1 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Mar	32.8 °C	36 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 Mar	34.4 °C	32 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Mar	35.2 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Mar	36.9 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Mar	35.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
11 Mar	33.9 °C	31 %	48 km/h	2.3 mm	Moderate 21
12 Mar	33.0 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Mar	34.0 °C	29 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Mar	33.1 °C	30 %	46 km/h	0.9 mm	High 30
15 Mar	34.6 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.8 mm	High 30
16 Mar	34.2 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
17 Mar	33.8 °C	31 %	46 km/h	0.3 mm	High 33
18 Mar	35.3 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Mar	35.8 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Mar	33.4 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
21 Mar	33.0 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.4 mm	High 36
22 Mar after	32.7 °C	38 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Mar after	33.2 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Mar after	34.0 °C	33 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Mar after	36.3 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Mar after	37.4 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
27 Mar after	35.8 °C	33 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Mar after	34.9 °C	35 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
29 Mar after	33.6 °C	36 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Mar after	35.6 °C	31 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Mar after	34.6 °C	35 %	47 km/h	0.7 mm	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Feb 2026

After · 28 Mar 2026

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 11 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 79 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 61: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak79 µg/m³

Days over the guideline26 days

PM1086 µg/m³

Optical depth0.97

WHO 15

2425262728123456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 131Every 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 Mindon fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 26 February 2026 and 21 March 2026: 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 6,737 hectares (67.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mindon (6,771 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 ↗

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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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. 131 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