Myawaddy fire, March 2021 Myawaddy
The fire started on 8 March 2021 in Myawaddy, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,757 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 96th largest in Kayin since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 100 in Myanmar in 2021, of 190.
Compare with…
We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 2,757ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 8 Mar 2021 – 12 Mar 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 8 Mar
- 2021
Where it burned
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,148 ha in 2016, 2,105 ha in 2017, 1,674 ha in 2018, 1,849 ha in 2019, 1,930 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,742 ha that had burned before.
- 1,684 ha Myawaddy fire, March 2019 2,363 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,547 ha Myawaddy fire, March 2017 3,772 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 904 ha Myawaddy fire, March 2016 2,244 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
-
Myawaddy where it started2,771 ha0.9 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.12 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.
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
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.
Other fires nearby
- 10,955 haMyawaddy14 March 2026 · 27 days · 18 km away
- 75,419 haKyainseikgyi3 March 2020 · 49 days · 26 km away
- 25,040 haMyawaddy13 February 2021 · 38 days · 32 km away
- 21,008 haMyawaddy6 March 2019 · 21 days · 33 km away
- 15,646 haMyawaddy10 March 2016 · 17 days · 36 km away
- 10,792 haMae Sot แม่สอด17 March 2026 · 33 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Myawaddy fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 March 2021 and 12 March 2021: 5 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 2,757 hectares (27.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Myawaddy (2,771 ha, 0.9 %).
- 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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.