How long did the Ngape fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 10 February 2023: 7 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 4,035 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Minhla (2,068 ha, 0.9 %); Ngape (1,987 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 · 2023-02-04 → 2023-02-10

Ngape fire, February 2023 Minhla, Ngape

Out · last detection 11 Feb 2023, 19:08 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2023 in Ngape, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,035 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 55th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 76 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

The power measured by the satellite is low (26.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Minhla · 2026 Minhla · 2026 Mindon · 2024 Mindon · 2025

Burnt area: 4,035ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 4 Feb 2023 – 10 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 4 Feb; 2023
Heat detections: 102; in a single hotspot: 26 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 86MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb10 Feb

Play back 11 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Feb 6 Feb 7 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

44km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 45 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 17 Feb.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,728 ha in 2016, 640 ha in 2020, 1,169 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,128 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (40 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

Minhla

2,068 ha

0.9 %
Ngape where it started

1,987 ha

1.5 %

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)
4 Feb	34.9 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Feb	35.1 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Feb	33.6 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 Feb	31.5 °C	23 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Feb	31.2 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Feb	32.9 °C	30 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
10 Feb	32.9 °C	34 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Feb after	34.1 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Feb after	34.5 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
13 Feb after	33.9 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Feb after	33.7 °C	34 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Feb after	34.8 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Feb after	35.0 °C	23 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
17 Feb after	30.4 °C	47 %	26 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2023

After · 17 Feb 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 · 102Every 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 Ngape fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 10 February 2023: 7 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 4,035 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Minhla (2,068 ha, 0.9 %); Ngape (1,987 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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. 102 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