Mongkaing fire, 11 March 2022 Mongkaing, Lawksawk
The fire started on 11 March 2022 in Mongkaing, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,072 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 106th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 7 in Myanmar in 2022, of 77.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 6,072ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 11 Mar 2022 – 21 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 291
- in a single hotspot: 179 MW
- Danger at start
- 32
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 285MW
- 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 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 22 Mar.
This area had burned before
41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 868 ha in 2018, 159 ha in 2019, 1,957 ha in 2020, 1,001 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,470 ha that had burned before.
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
-
Mongkaing where it started3,871 ha1.0 %
-
2,230 ha0.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Mar | 37.0 °C | 25 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 12 Mar | 37.2 °C | 27 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 13 Mar | 37.1 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 14 Mar | 37.7 °C | 30 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 34 |
| 15 Mar | 37.6 °C | 22 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Mar | 37.1 °C | 18 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 17 Mar | 36.4 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Mar | 36.0 °C | 28 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Mar | 36.6 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Mar | 36.5 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Mar | 36.2 °C | 28 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 22 Mar after | 28.6 °C | 53 % | 18 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 15 |
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.
Detections table · 291Every 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 Mongkaing fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 March 2022 and 21 March 2022: 11 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 6,072 hectares (60.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mongkaing (3,871 ha, 1.0 %); Lawksawk (2,230 ha, 0.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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. 291 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.