Paletwa fire, 19 March 2018 Paletwa
The fire started on 19 March 2018 in Paletwa, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,330 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 188th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 37 in Myanmar in 2018, of 55.
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- Burnt area
- 2,330ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 19 Mar 2018 – 31 Mar 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Mar
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 100
- in a single hotspot: 116 MW
- Average daily power
- 319MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 158 ha in 2017.
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
-
Paletwa where it started2,344 ha reached on 21 Mar0.3 %
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 0.11 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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.
Detections table · 100Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 43,491 haPaletwa17 March 2020 · 24 days · 15 km away
- 96,342 haPaletwa24 March 2026 · 26 days · 21 km away
- 53,795 haPaletwa13 March 2021 · 23 days · 25 km away
- 16,369 haPaletwa23 March 2019 · 8 days · 27 km away
- 9,837 haPaletwa19 March 2022 · 17 days · 28 km away
- 9,804 haTuipangApril 2023 · 14 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Paletwa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 March 2018 to 31 March 2018 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 March 2018 to 27 March 2018.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,330 hectares (23.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Paletwa (2,344 ha, 0.3 %).
- 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 27 March 2018 → 31 March 2018.
- Start date: 21 March 2018 → 19 March 2018.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 March 2018 to 27 March 2018. 100 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.