Skip to content
worldfires
en
MM · Myanmar · →

Wakema fire, March 2026 Wakema

Out · last detection 23 Apr 2026, 07:03 UTC

The fire started on 26 March 2026 in Wakema, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,306 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in Ayeyarwady since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 162 in Myanmar in 2026, of 480.

Compare with…
Burnt area
4,306ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
26 Mar 2026 – 23 Apr 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Mar
2026
Heat detections
166
in a single hotspot: 37 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
45MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Mar23 Apr
23 Apr 2026

How it evolved, day by day

26 Mar 2026 · 13 MW · 3 27 Mar 2026 · 12 MW · 2 29 Mar 2026 · 2 MW · 1 30 Mar 2026 · 8 MW · 1 1 Apr 2026 · 49 MW · 6 2 Apr 2026 · 3 MW · 3 3 Apr 2026 · 234 MW · 30 4 Apr 2026 · 85 MW · 17 5 Apr 2026 · 36 MW · 8 6 Apr 2026 · 96 MW · 19 7 Apr 2026 · 115 MW · 23 8 Apr 2026 · 107 MW · 13 9 Apr 2026 · 31 MW · 6 11 Apr 2026 · 91 MW · 13 12 Apr 2026 · 47 MW · 4 13 Apr 2026 · 38 MW · 4 14 Apr 2026 · 13 MW · 2 15 Apr 2026 · 27 MW · 4 16 Apr 2026 · 5 MW · 2 18 Apr 2026 · 7 MW · 1 19 Apr 2026 · 2 MW · 1 22 Apr 2026 · 9 MW · 1 23 Apr 2026 · 11 MW · 2
26 Mar 1 Apr 3 Apr 5 Apr 9 Apr 14 Apr 19 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
36km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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

  1. Wakema where it started
    4,333 ha reached on 26 Mar
    3.7 %

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.

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)
1 Apr 38.6 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Apr 38.7 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Apr 37.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Apr 37.1 °C 42 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Apr 36.7 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Apr 36.8 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
7 Apr 36.6 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Apr 36.6 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Apr 35.7 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Apr 36.4 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Apr 37.5 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Apr 37.4 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Apr 37.6 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Apr 37.4 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Apr 36.9 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Apr 37.7 °C 46 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Apr 37.5 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Apr 38.6 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
19 Apr 37.8 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Apr 37.5 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Apr 37.5 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Apr 37.9 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Apr 38.0 °C 44 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Apr after 38.0 °C 46 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Apr after 38.3 °C 43 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Apr after 37.3 °C 46 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Mar 2026
After · 30 Apr 2026

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 April 2026 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.83
303112345678910111213141516171819
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 · 166Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Wakema fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2026 to 23 April 2026 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 April 2026 to 16 April 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,306 hectares (43.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Wakema (4,333 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 April 2026 → 23 April 2026.
  2. Start date: 1 April 2026 → 26 March 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 1 April 2026 to 16 April 2026. 166 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.