How long did the Saw fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 March 2020 and 22 March 2020: 11 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 4,190 hectares (41.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tilin (2,213 ha, 1.7 %); Saw (2,000 ha, 1.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 · 2020-03-12 → 2020-03-22

Saw fire, 12 March 2020 Tilin, Saw

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2020, 06:18 UTC

The fire started on 12 March 2020 in Saw, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,190 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 52th largest in Magway since 2016 (of 190 with a page). Number 63 in Myanmar in 2020, of 232.

The power measured by the satellite is low (14.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tilin · 2016 Tilin · 2018 Saw · 2026 Pauk · 2026

Burnt area: 4,190ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 12 Mar 2020 – 22 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 12 Mar; 2020
Heat detections: 154; in a single hotspot: 15 MW
Danger at start: 26; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 32MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar22 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

12 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 20 Mar 22 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

35°high

36km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,984 ha in 2016, 38 ha in 2017, 1,717 ha in 2018, 1,664 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,981 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (42 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

Tilin

2,213 ha

1.7 %
Saw where it started

2,000 ha

1.1 %

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)
12 Mar	33.5 °C	30 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
13 Mar	34.1 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
14 Mar	34.9 °C	32 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
15 Mar	34.7 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Mar	35.4 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Mar	33.3 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Mar	32.7 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
19 Mar	32.8 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Mar	32.2 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Mar	32.4 °C	30 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Mar	29.6 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
23 Mar after	31.7 °C	34 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
24 Mar after	31.1 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
25 Mar after	33.0 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
26 Mar after	34.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Mar after	34.9 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Mar after	36.4 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Mar after	37.3 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Mar after	36.5 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
31 Mar after	36.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Apr after	35.8 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Mar 2020

After · 29 Mar 2020

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 · 154Every 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 Saw fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 March 2020 and 22 March 2020: 11 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 4,190 hectares (41.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Tilin (2,213 ha, 1.7 %); Saw (2,000 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 154 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