How long did the Tachileik fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2025 to 5 April 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2025 to 1 April 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,656 hectares (26.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tachileik (1,611 ha, 0.4 %); Monghsat (1,055 ha, 0.2 %).

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 · 2025-03-25 → 2025-04-05

Tachileik fire, March 2025 Tachileik, Monghsat

Out · last detection 5 Apr 2025, 06:37 UTC

The fire started on 25 March 2025 in Tachileik, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,656 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 468th largest in Shan since 2016 (of 806 with a page). Number 82 in Myanmar in 2025, of 135.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tachileik · 2023 Tachileik · 2024 Tachileik · 2019 Tachileik · 2026

Burnt area: 2,656ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 25 Mar 2025 – 5 Apr 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 25 Mar; 2025
Heat detections: 72; in a single hotspot: 236 MW
Average daily power: 205MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Mar5 Apr

Play back 5 Apr 2025

How it evolved, day by day

26 Mar 28 Mar 30 Mar 1 Apr 5 Apr

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

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,720 ha in 2016, 695 ha in 2017, 203 ha in 2018, 2,041 ha in 2019, 1,460 ha in 2020, 1,060 ha in 2021, 490 ha in 2022, 1,989 ha in 2023, 1,720 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,631 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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

Tachileik where it started

1,611 ha reached on 26 Mar

0.4 %
Monghsat

1,055 ha reached on 28 Mar

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.13 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Mar 2025

After · 12 Apr 2025

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 30 March 2025 the air beside the fire reached 167 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 110: 7.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak167 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10172 µg/m³

Optical depth1.68

WHO 15

252627282930311234

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 · 72Every 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 Tachileik fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 March 2025 to 5 April 2025 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2025 to 1 April 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,656 hectares (26.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tachileik (1,611 ha, 0.4 %); Monghsat (1,055 ha, 0.2 %).
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: 1 April 2025 → 5 April 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 27 March 2025 → 25 March 2025.

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 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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 March 2025 to 1 April 2025. 72 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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