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Saw fire, March 2019 Saw, Mindat, Kanpetlet

Out · last detection 1 Apr 2019, 18:40 UTC

The fire started on 16 March 2019 in Saw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,884 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 27th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 19 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Saw · 2016Mindat · 2023Saw · 2024Saw · 2021

Burnt area
5,884ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
16 Mar 2019 – 31 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
16 Mar
2019
Heat detections
276
in a single hotspot: 97 MW
Danger at start
13
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
57MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Mar31 Mar
1 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

16 Mar 2019 · 10 MW · 6 17 Mar 2019 · 14 MW · 7 18 Mar 2019 · 14 MW · 6 19 Mar 2019 · 84 MW · 28 20 Mar 2019 · 67 MW · 21 21 Mar 2019 · 36 MW · 21 22 Mar 2019 · 130 MW · 35 23 Mar 2019 · 32 MW · 15 24 Mar 2019 · 62 MW · 17 25 Mar 2019 · 39 MW · 15 26 Mar 2019 · 40 MW · 4 28 Mar 2019 · 8 MW · 3 29 Mar 2019 · 61 MW · 11 30 Mar 2019 · 159 MW · 14 31 Mar 2019 · 152 MW · 8 1 Apr 2019 · 5 MW · 2
16 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 25 Mar 29 Mar 30 Mar 1 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
46km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.8 mm on 1 Apr.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,591 ha in 2016, 779 ha in 2017, 859 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,557 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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

  1. Saw where it started
    2,313 ha
    1.3 %
  2. Mindat
    2,057 ha
    0.6 %
  3. Kanpetlet
    1,547 ha
    0.6 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.26 ha
Residents≈ 500

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.26 hectares of built-up land and about 500 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

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)
16 Mar 30.3 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
17 Mar 30.4 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
18 Mar 31.4 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
19 Mar 30.1 °C 37 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
20 Mar 30.2 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
21 Mar 31.2 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
22 Mar 32.6 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
23 Mar 32.4 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
24 Mar 32.4 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
25 Mar 32.8 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
26 Mar 33.2 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Mar 32.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Mar 31.1 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
29 Mar 32.7 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
30 Mar 33.7 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Mar 32.3 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
1 Apr after 29.9 °C 35 % 30 km/h 1.8 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Mar 2019
After · 7 Apr 2019

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 · 276Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Saw fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 March 2019 and 31 March 2019: 16 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 5,884 hectares (58.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Saw (2,313 ha, 1.3 %); Mindat (2,057 ha, 0.6 %); Kanpetlet (1,547 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, 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

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 276 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.