How long did the Shadaw fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 March 2019 to 1 April 2019 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2019 to 25 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,460 hectares (174.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bawlake (11,986 ha, 6.1 %); Shadaw (5,546 ha, 2.5 %); Loikaw (24 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2019-03-02 → 2019-04-01

Shadaw fire, 2 March 2019 Bawlake, Shadaw, Loikaw

Out · last detection 1 Apr 2019, 18:41 UTC

The fire started on 2 March 2019 in Shadaw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,460 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Kayah since 2016 (of 209 with a page). Number 5 in Myanmar in 2019, of 177.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Shadaw · 2018 Bawlake · 2017 Shadaw · 2017 Bawlake · 2016

Burnt area: 17,460ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 31days; 2 Mar 2019 – 1 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 2 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 899; in a single hotspot: 96 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 115MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Mar1 Apr

Play back 1 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

3 Mar 8 Mar 13 Mar 18 Mar 23 Mar 28 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

41km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,473 ha in 2016, 5,690 ha in 2017, 5,388 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,713 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (175 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

Bawlake

11,986 ha reached on 6 Mar

6.1 %
Shadaw where it started

5,546 ha reached on 3 Mar

2.5 %
Loikaw

24 ha reached on 9 Mar

0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
2 Mar	35.8 °C	29 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Mar	35.5 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 Mar	35.7 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
5 Mar	34.8 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
6 Mar	34.0 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Mar	33.1 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Mar	34.5 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Mar	34.5 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Mar	34.6 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Mar	35.7 °C	21 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Mar	35.9 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
13 Mar	37.0 °C	23 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Mar	37.0 °C	22 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Mar	37.3 °C	27 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Mar	37.8 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
17 Mar	37.9 °C	20 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Mar	38.2 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Mar	37.4 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Mar	37.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
21 Mar	37.4 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Mar	37.7 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Mar	37.5 °C	23 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Mar	38.5 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Mar	38.5 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
26 Mar	39.2 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Mar	37.1 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Mar	36.6 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Mar	38.1 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Mar	37.8 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Mar	37.7 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Apr	37.5 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
2 Apr after	38.2 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Apr after	37.2 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 38
4 Apr after	38.5 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
5 Apr after	38.9 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Apr after	38.6 °C	26 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Apr after	38.7 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
8 Apr after	38.9 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Apr after	39.1 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Apr after	39.5 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Apr after	39.9 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Feb 2019

After · 8 Apr 2019

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 · 899Every 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 Shadaw fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 March 2019 to 1 April 2019 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2019 to 25 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,460 hectares (174.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bawlake (11,986 ha, 6.1 %); Shadaw (5,546 ha, 2.5 %); Loikaw (24 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 March 2019 → 1 April 2019.
27 October 2026 Start date: 3 March 2019 → 2 March 2019.

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.

Report an error

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 March 2019 to 25 March 2019. 899 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.

Where it burned