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Budhlada fire, October 2020 Budhlada, Lehra, Sunam

Out · last measured on 13 Nov 2020

The fire started on 29 October 2020 in Budhlada, India, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,169 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 23th largest in Punjab since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 12 in India in 2020, of 18.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mansa · 2016Mansa · 2021Mansa · 2020Sangrur · 2021

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
7,169ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
29 Oct 2020 – 13 Nov 2020
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
29 Oct
2020
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

31°high
32km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 20.5 mm on 15 Nov.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,691 ha in 2016, 3,861 ha in 2017, 3,565 ha in 2018, 3,371 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,708 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (72 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. Budhlada where it started
    4,121 ha
    5.6 %
  2. Lehra
    2,748 ha
    7.2 %
  3. Sunam
    329 ha
    0.6 %

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 area35 ha
Residents≈ 3,700

Inside the perimeter there were about 35 hectares of built-up land and about 3,700 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)
29 Oct 31.0 °C 25 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Oct 30.7 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
31 Oct 30.9 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Nov 30.9 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Nov 30.8 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Nov 29.6 °C 24 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Nov 30.5 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Nov 31.4 °C 21 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Nov 31.2 °C 24 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Nov 30.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Nov 29.7 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Nov 29.7 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Nov 29.3 °C 31 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Nov 28.6 °C 40 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Nov 28.2 °C 39 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Nov 28.4 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Nov after 27.2 °C 38 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Nov after 26.9 °C 39 % 40 km/h 20.5 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Oct 2020
After · 20 Nov 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Budhlada fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 October 2020 and 13 November 2020: 16 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 7,169 hectares (71.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Budhlada (4,121 ha, 5.6 %); Lehra (2,748 ha, 7.2 %); Sunam (329 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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.
  • 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.