Paletwa fire, 24 March 2026 Paletwa, Kyauktaw
The fire started on 24 March 2026 in Paletwa, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 96,342 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 2th largest in Chin since 2016 (of 242 with a page). Number 4 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 96,342ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 24 Mar 2026 – 18 Apr 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 24 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 2,912
- in a single hotspot: 392 MW
- Danger at start
- 33
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 3.3GW
- 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 12 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.5 mm on 28 Apr.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 19,579 ha in 2016, 16,187 ha in 2017, 18,980 ha in 2018, 29,896 ha in 2019, 43,984 ha in 2020, 46,573 ha in 2021, 24,764 ha in 2022, 52,174 ha in 2023, 30,253 ha in 2024, 11,067 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 88,508 ha that had burned before.
- 35,282 ha Paletwa fire, March 2023 145,898 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 29,223 ha Paletwa fire, March 2021 53,795 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 21,182 ha Paletwa fire, March 2020 43,491 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 10,934 ha Paletwa fire, March 2019 16,369 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,661 ha Paletwa fire, March 2020 14,894 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 7,272 ha Paletwa fire, March 2022 9,837 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,487 ha Paletwa fire, March 2016 8,195 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,235 ha Paletwa fire, March 2025 8,713 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
-
Paletwa where it started96,100 ha reached on 24 Mar12 %
-
371 ha reached on 27 Mar0.2 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 5.0 hectares of built-up land and about 6,800 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 24 Mar | 35.2 °C | 28 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 25 Mar | 36.9 °C | 25 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 26 Mar | 37.9 °C | 27 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 27 Mar | 38.1 °C | 27 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 28 Mar | 32.6 °C | 42 % | 31 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 22 |
| 29 Mar | 35.5 °C | 43 % | 29 km/h | 0.8 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 30 Mar | 35.7 °C | 37 % | 31 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Mar | 36.8 °C | 34 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 1 Apr | 36.7 °C | 38 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Apr | 38.3 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 32 |
| 3 Apr | 39.3 °C | 30 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 4 Apr | 38.0 °C | 33 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 5 Apr | 37.4 °C | 39 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 38 |
| 6 Apr | 38.3 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 34 |
| 7 Apr | 36.7 °C | 26 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Apr | 35.7 °C | 35 % | 37 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Apr | 33.4 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Apr | 36.1 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 31 |
| 11 Apr | 37.0 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Apr | 38.2 °C | 27 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 13 Apr | 38.6 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 14 Apr | 38.7 °C | 29 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Apr | 37.2 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 16 Apr | 39.1 °C | 33 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 17 Apr | 38.7 °C | 37 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Apr | 39.3 °C | 33 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 19 Apr after | 38.9 °C | 39 % | 36 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 30 |
| 20 Apr after | 37.6 °C | 42 % | 38 km/h | 0.6 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Apr after | 37.9 °C | 44 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Apr after | 38.7 °C | 42 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 28 |
| 23 Apr after | 39.5 °C | 33 % | 40 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Apr after | 40.3 °C | 32 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 25 Apr after | 39.2 °C | 35 % | 36 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 36 |
| 26 Apr after | 38.5 °C | 37 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 27 Apr after | 32.3 °C | 53 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 28 Apr after | 31.8 °C | 60 % | 47 km/h | 14.5 mm | Very low 4 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 29 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 158 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 2,912Every 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 Paletwa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 March 2026 and 18 April 2026: 26 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 96,342 hectares (963.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Paletwa (96,100 ha, 12 %); Kyauktaw (371 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 2,912 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.
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.