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Babai fire, April 2021 Babai, Sohagpur, Pipariya

Out · last measured on 7 Apr 2021

The fire started on 1 April 2021 in Babai, India, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Madhya Pradesh since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 3 in India in 2021, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Babai · 2020Babai · 2019Badi · 2026Hoshangabad · 2025

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
21,633ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
1 Apr 2021 – 7 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
1 Apr
2021
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

40°high
28km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,003 ha in 2016, 9,051 ha in 2017, 7,367 ha in 2018, 10,201 ha in 2019, 14,654 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,347 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (216 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. Babai where it started
    12,887 ha
    21 %
  2. Sohagpur
    8,803 ha
    5.6 %
  3. Pipariya
    51 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area100 ha
Residents≈ 31,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 100 hectares of built-up land and about 31,000 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
1 Apr 38.4 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Apr 38.4 °C 14 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Apr 38.9 °C 17 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Apr 38.2 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Apr 39.2 °C 14 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Apr 40.3 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Apr 40.0 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Apr after 39.4 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Apr after 38.5 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Apr after 37.2 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Apr after 36.1 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 48
12 Apr after 37.6 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
13 Apr after 39.3 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Apr after 38.8 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 50
15 Apr after 37.0 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Apr after 39.0 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Apr after 38.1 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Mar 2021
After · 14 Apr 2021

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Babai fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 April 2021 and 7 April 2021: 7 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 21,633 hectares (216.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Babai (12,887 ha, 21 %); Sohagpur (8,803 ha, 5.6 %); Pipariya (51 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of India (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.

Emergency number: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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. 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 2020, 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.