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Barhat fire, April 2017 Barhat, Surajgarha, Dharhara

Out · last detection 13 Apr 2017, 07:16 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2017 in Barhat, India, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,090 hectares from heat detections, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Bihār since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 2 in India in 2017, of 27.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.6 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: Kharagpur · 2022Kharagpur · 2026

Burnt area
20,090ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
7 Apr 2017 – 12 Apr 2017
Municipalities hit
6
subdistricts
Started on
7 Apr
2017
Heat detections
831
in a single hotspot: 23 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
485MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr12 Apr
13 Apr 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 2017 · 7 MW · 3 8 Apr 2017 · 53 MW · 13 9 Apr 2017 · 496 MW · 200 10 Apr 2017 · 1,823 MW · 404 11 Apr 2017 · 911 MW · 183 12 Apr 2017 · 95 MW · 26 13 Apr 2017 · 8 MW · 2
7 Apr 8 Apr 9 Apr 10 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 13 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
47km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 15 Apr.

This area had burned before

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,392 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (201 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. Barhat where it started
    7,767 ha
    34 %
  2. Surajgarha
    4,670 ha
    12 %
  3. Dharhara
    4,641 ha
    16 %
  4. Kharagpur
    1,724 ha
    5.0 %
  5. Lakshmipur
    828 ha
    3.2 %
  6. Chanan*
    546 ha
    3.8 %

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 2015
Built-up area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 800

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 hectares of built-up land and about 800 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
2 Apr 37.8 °C 33 % 36 km/h 1.0 mm High 27
3 Apr 38.2 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Apr 33.9 °C 48 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Apr 31.7 °C 54 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Apr 32.1 °C 61 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Apr 37.7 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
8 Apr 39.0 °C 30 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
9 Apr 36.7 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Apr 35.8 °C 12 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Apr 36.1 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Apr 36.6 °C 18 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Apr after 37.0 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Apr after 36.9 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
15 Apr after 33.5 °C 39 % 34 km/h 1.5 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Mar 2017
After · 19 Apr 2017

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 · 831Every 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 India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Barhat fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 April 2017 and 12 April 2017: 6 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 20,090 hectares (200.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: Barhat (7,767 ha, 34 %); Surajgarha (4,670 ha, 12 %); Dharhara (4,641 ha, 16 %); Kharagpur (1,724 ha, 5.0 %); Lakshmipur (828 ha, 3.2 %); Chanan* (546 ha, 3.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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.

Report an error
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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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 831 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 2015, 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.