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Ye-U fire, March 2020 Ye-U

Out · last detection 21 Mar 2020, 06:56 UTC

The fire started on 12 March 2020 in Ye-U, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,411 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Saigang since 2016 (of 100 with a page). Number 35 in Myanmar in 2020, of 232.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ye-U · 2017Ye-U · 2019Ye-U · 2025Ye-U · 2026

Burnt area
5,411ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
12 Mar 2020 – 20 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Mar
2020
Heat detections
232
in a single hotspot: 52 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar20 Mar
21 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

12 Mar 2020 · 34 MW · 10 13 Mar 2020 · 8 MW · 3 14 Mar 2020 · 141 MW · 32 15 Mar 2020 · 74 MW · 11 16 Mar 2020 · 269 MW · 52 17 Mar 2020 · 329 MW · 34 18 Mar 2020 · 33 MW · 13 19 Mar 2020 · 221 MW · 29 20 Mar 2020 · 2 MW · 2 21 Mar 2020 · 39 MW · 9
12 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar 20 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

38°high
34km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,854 ha in 2017, 160 ha in 2018, 2,326 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,060 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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. Ye-U where it started
    5,441 ha
    3.9 %

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 36.8 °C 24 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Mar 37.1 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Mar 38.2 °C 26 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Mar 38.2 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Mar 38.1 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Mar 35.8 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Mar 35.1 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Mar 35.8 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Mar 33.5 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Mar after 34.1 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Mar after 34.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 41
23 Mar after 34.0 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Mar after 33.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar after 35.8 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Mar after 36.9 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Mar after 37.5 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
28 Mar after 38.5 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Mar after 39.7 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Mar after 38.7 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Mar 2020
After · 27 Mar 2020

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 · 232Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ye-U fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 March 2020 and 20 March 2020: 9 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 5,411 hectares (54.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ye-U (5,441 ha, 3.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 232 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.