Sidoktaya fire, March 2022 Sidoktaya, Saw
The fire started on 9 March 2022 in Sidoktaya, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,516 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 14th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 3 in Myanmar in 2022, of 77.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 10,516ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 13days
- 9 Mar 2022 – 21 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 9 Mar
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 570
- in a single hotspot: 83 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 272MW
- 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 52 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.9 mm on 22 Mar.
This area had burned before
85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,104 ha in 2016, 3,261 ha in 2017, 1,430 ha in 2018, 1,246 ha in 2019, 1,167 ha in 2020, 1,984 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,918 ha that had burned before.
- 4,059 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2016 5,567 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,428 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2016 3,245 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,395 ha Saw fire, February 2021 17,092 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,244 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2019 3,732 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 847 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2020 3,263 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 479 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2017 2,244 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 319 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2020 4,820 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 214 ha Sidoktaya fire, March 2017 16,167 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
-
Sidoktaya where it started8,843 ha reached on 9 Mar3.1 %
-
1,738 ha reached on 11 Mar1.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 400 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 9 Mar | 37.4 °C | 24 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 10 Mar | 38.0 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 11 Mar | 38.5 °C | 17 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 12 Mar | 38.6 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 13 Mar | 38.3 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 14 Mar | 39.3 °C | 24 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 15 Mar | 39.8 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Mar | 38.5 °C | 22 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Mar | 36.7 °C | 26 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Mar | 38.0 °C | 25 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 19 Mar | 38.8 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Mar | 39.4 °C | 21 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Mar | 39.0 °C | 24 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Mar after | 28.4 °C | 51 % | 26 km/h | 7.9 mm | Very low 3 |
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 · 570Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 99,370 haSaw18 February 2026 · 64 days · 11 km away
- 29,536 haSidoktaya9 March 2019 · 45 days · 17 km away
- 19,378 haKanpetletFebruary 2021 · 38 days · 23 km away
- 24,764 haKanpetlet20 March 2020 · 30 days · 24 km away
- 19,991 haKanpetlet7 March 2025 · 30 days · 25 km away
- 17,092 haSaw21 February 2021 · 32 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sidoktaya fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 March 2022 and 21 March 2022: 13 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 10,516 hectares (105.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Sidoktaya (8,843 ha, 3.1 %); Saw (1,738 ha, 1.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 570 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.
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.