How long did the Birendranagar fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2021 to 5 April 2021 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 March 2021 to 5 April 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,151 hectares (31.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Birendranagar (2,026 ha, 8.2 %); Lekbeshi (1,134 ha, 6.2 %); Bheriganga (1 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

NP · Nepal · 2021-03-23 → 2021-04-05

Birendranagar fire, March 2021 Birendranagar, Lekbeshi, Bheriganga

Out · last detection 5 Apr 2021, 20:38 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2021 in Birendranagar, Nepal, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,151 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in Karnali since 2016 (of 42 with a page). Number 13 in Nepal in 2021, of 39.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mihinpurwa Motipur · 2016 Mihinpurwa Motipur · 2019 Bardiya National Park · 2021 Mihinpurwa Motipur · 2022

Burnt area: 3,151ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 23 Mar 2021 – 5 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 23 Mar; 2021
Heat detections: 122; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 62MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar5 Apr

Play back 5 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

23 Mar 25 Mar 27 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 3 Apr 5 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

35°high

53km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 21 Apr.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,681 ha in 2016, 1,302 ha in 2017, 60 ha in 2018, 1,770 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,629 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Birendranagar where it started

2,026 ha reached on 25 Mar

8.2 %
Lekbeshi

1,134 ha reached on 23 Mar

6.2 %
Bheriganga

1 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 area11 ha

Residents≈ 1,400

Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 1,400 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)
23 Mar	33.1 °C	24 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Mar	30.2 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
25 Mar	30.5 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Mar	31.4 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
27 Mar	31.3 °C	31 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Mar	31.1 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
29 Mar	32.7 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
30 Mar	34.7 °C	21 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
31 Mar	31.0 °C	37 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Apr	29.5 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
2 Apr	31.2 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Apr	31.4 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Apr	32.0 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Apr	32.5 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Apr after	33.4 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
7 Apr after	34.0 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
8 Apr after	33.3 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Apr after	33.9 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Apr after	34.0 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Apr after	34.3 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
12 Apr after	34.7 °C	17 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
13 Apr after	34.7 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
14 Apr after	36.4 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
15 Apr after	35.3 °C	21 %	54 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 44
16 Apr after	35.2 °C	21 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Apr after	32.5 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
18 Apr after	32.9 °C	22 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
19 Apr after	33.9 °C	21 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Apr after	36.1 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 45
21 Apr after	29.0 °C	40 %	34 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Mar 2021

After · 12 Apr 2021

Before After

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 · 122Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nepal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Birendranagar fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 March 2021 to 5 April 2021 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 March 2021 to 5 April 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,151 hectares (31.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Birendranagar (2,026 ha, 8.2 %); Lekbeshi (1,134 ha, 6.2 %); Bheriganga (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nepal (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: 101 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 28 March 2021 → 23 March 2021.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 101.

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 28 March 2021 to 5 April 2021. 122 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 (Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License). 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.

Where it burned