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Yebyu fire, March 2023 Yebyu

Out · last measured on 5 Apr 2023

The fire started on 15 March 2023 in Yebyu, Myanmar, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,024 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 5th largest in Tanitharyi since 2016 (of 75 with a page). Number 17 in Myanmar in 2023, of 240.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yebyu · 2019Yebyu · 2016Yebyu · 2020Yebyu · 2020

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
9,024ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
15 Mar 2023 – 5 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Mar
2023
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

38°high
37km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

75% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,262 ha in 2016, 2,700 ha in 2019, 6,721 ha in 2020, 579 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,761 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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. Yebyu where it started
    9,081 ha
    2.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

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)
15 Mar 36.6 °C 43 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm High 22
16 Mar 36.5 °C 45 % 21 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
17 Mar 35.9 °C 47 % 27 km/h 2.4 mm Low 11
18 Mar 37.6 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
19 Mar 36.0 °C 48 % 29 km/h 2.5 mm Low 9
20 Mar 36.5 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Mar 37.4 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
22 Mar 37.3 °C 45 % 36 km/h 0.8 mm High 23
23 Mar 35.7 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
24 Mar 37.6 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Mar 36.4 °C 45 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Mar 37.1 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Mar 38.3 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Mar 38.5 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
29 Mar 37.4 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
30 Mar 37.3 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Mar 37.1 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Apr 37.3 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
2 Apr 36.1 °C 48 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm High 24
3 Apr 36.6 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
4 Apr 36.1 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Apr 36.5 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
6 Apr after 38.5 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Apr after 35.3 °C 53 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
8 Apr after 37.5 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Apr after 38.5 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.8 mm High 28
10 Apr after 38.2 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm High 28
11 Apr after 37.7 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
12 Apr after 37.4 °C 45 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 29
13 Apr after 36.8 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
14 Apr after 36.8 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Apr after 37.5 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Mar 2023
After · 12 Apr 2023

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 31 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³
Days over the guideline26 days
PM10104 µg/m³
Optical depth1.61
1314151617181920212223242526272829303112345678
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)

Other fires nearby

All fires in Myanmar ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Yebyu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 March 2023 and 5 April 2023: 22 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 9,024 hectares (90.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yebyu (9,081 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 37 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

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.
  • 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.