How long did the Thabeikkyin fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 February 2024 to 25 March 2024 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 March 2024 to 18 March 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,745 hectares (87.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Thabeikkyin (5,543 ha, 2.1 %); Mabein (2,878 ha, 0.6 %); Mongmit (360 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2024-02-25 → 2024-03-25

Thabeikkyin fire, 25 February 2024 Thabeikkyin, Mabein, Mongmit

Out · last detection 24 Mar 2024, 06:07 UTC

The fire started on 25 February 2024 in Thabeikkyin, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,745 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Mandalay since 2016 (of 69 with a page). Number 15 in Myanmar in 2024, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mabein · 2024 Mongmit · 2025 Mabein · 2026 Kanbalu · 2024

Burnt area: 8,745ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 25 Feb 2024 – 25 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 25 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 396; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 60MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Feb25 Mar

Play back 24 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

25 Feb 2 Mar 6 Mar 10 Mar 14 Mar 18 Mar 24 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

36°high

38km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 21 Mar.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 214 ha in 2020, 131 ha in 2021, 738 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (87 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

Thabeikkyin where it started

5,543 ha reached on 25 Feb

2.1 %
Mabein

2,878 ha reached on 1 Mar

0.6 %
Mongmit

360 ha reached on 26 Feb

0.1 %

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.

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	33.8 °C	31 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
3 Mar	34.3 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
4 Mar	34.7 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Mar	34.8 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Mar	34.6 °C	16 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Mar	34.7 °C	24 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Mar	35.1 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Mar	34.5 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Mar	35.0 °C	25 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Mar	35.4 °C	25 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
12 Mar	35.4 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
13 Mar	35.6 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
14 Mar	35.5 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Mar	35.1 °C	31 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Mar	35.6 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Mar	35.3 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Mar	36.4 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Mar	36.5 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Mar	36.2 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Mar	33.3 °C	42 %	36 km/h	4.1 mm	Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Feb 2024

After · 1 Apr 2024

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 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 57: 3.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak73 µg/m³

Days over the guideline22 days

PM10108 µg/m³

Optical depth1.89

WHO 15

29123456789101112131415161718192021

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 · 396Every 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 Thabeikkyin fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 February 2024 to 25 March 2024 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 March 2024 to 18 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,745 hectares (87.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Thabeikkyin (5,543 ha, 2.1 %); Mabein (2,878 ha, 0.6 %); Mongmit (360 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 18 March 2024 → 25 March 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 2 March 2024 → 25 February 2024.

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 2 March 2024 to 18 March 2024. 396 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.

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