How long did the Sinbaungwe fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 February 2026 and 20 February 2026: 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 16,664 hectares (166.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Thayet (11,344 ha, 9.4 %); Sinbaungwe (3,680 ha, 1.8 %); Minhla (1,735 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

MM · Myanmar · 2026-02-05 → 2026-02-20

Sinbaungwe fire, February 2026 Thayet, Sinbaungwe, Minhla

Out · last detection 20 Feb 2026, 18:54 UTC

The fire started on 5 February 2026 in Sinbaungwe, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,664 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 25 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Thayet · 2025 Mindon · 2026 Minhla · 2026

Burnt area: 16,664ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 5 Feb 2026 – 20 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 5 Feb; 2026
Heat detections: 443; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 83MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Feb20 Feb

Play back 20 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Feb 8 Feb 11 Feb 13 Feb 14 Feb 17 Feb 20 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

29km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,634 ha in 2016, 1,732 ha in 2022, 345 ha in 2023, 3,790 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,123 ha that had burned before.

2,147 ha Thayet fire, February 2025 2,379 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (167 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

Thayet

11,344 ha

9.4 %
Sinbaungwe where it started

3,680 ha

1.8 %
Minhla

1,735 ha

0.7 %

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 2025

Built-up area4.6 ha

Residents≈ 900

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.6 hectares of built-up land and about 900 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)
5 Feb	34.0 °C	35 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
6 Feb	33.1 °C	38 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Feb	33.6 °C	35 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
8 Feb	33.8 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
9 Feb	34.7 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Feb	34.6 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
11 Feb	35.3 °C	34 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
12 Feb	35.7 °C	22 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Feb	35.1 °C	27 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
14 Feb	34.5 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Feb	35.5 °C	22 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
16 Feb	34.8 °C	28 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Feb	34.9 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Feb	35.7 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Feb	36.8 °C	34 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Feb	36.3 °C	38 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Feb after	35.3 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.6 mm	High 30
22 Feb after	36.0 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Feb after	34.9 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Feb after	32.8 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Feb after	28.9 °C	56 %	28 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
26 Feb after	34.6 °C	33 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
27 Feb after	35.3 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Feb after	35.0 °C	29 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Mar after	34.4 °C	28 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Mar after	35.4 °C	29 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Jan 2026

After · 27 Feb 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 February 2026 the air beside the fire reached 105 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 70: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak105 µg/m³

Days over the guideline21 days

PM10107 µg/m³

Optical depth0.81

WHO 15

34567891011121314151617181920212223

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 443Every 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 Sinbaungwe fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 February 2026 and 20 February 2026: 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 16,664 hectares (166.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Thayet (11,344 ha, 9.4 %); Sinbaungwe (3,680 ha, 1.8 %); Minhla (1,735 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 443 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.

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