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Fazilka fire, November 2017 Fazilka, Jalalabad

Out · last detection 24 Nov 2017, 08:40 UTC

The fire started on 17 November 2017 in Fazilka, India, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,259 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Punjab since 2016 (of 33 with a page). Number 24 in India in 2017, of 27.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Fazilka · 2021Depalpur · 2026

Burnt area
5,259ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
17 Nov 2017 – 23 Nov 2017
Municipalities hit
2
subdistricts
Started on
17 Nov
2017
Heat detections
310
in a single hotspot: 42 MW
Danger at start
17
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
322MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Nov23 Nov
24 Nov 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Nov 2017 · 539 MW · 57 18 Nov 2017 · 914 MW · 116 19 Nov 2017 · 711 MW · 76 20 Nov 2017 · 203 MW · 28 21 Nov 2017 · 115 MW · 14 22 Nov 2017 · 33 MW · 4 23 Nov 2017 · 59 MW · 6 24 Nov 2017 · 5 MW · 1
17 Nov 18 Nov 19 Nov 21 Nov 23 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

27°high
38km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 59 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,510 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,896 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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. Fazilka where it started
    3,557 ha
    3.0 %
  2. Jalalabad
    1,722 ha
    3.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area54 ha
Residents≈ 11,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 54 hectares of built-up land and about 11,000 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)
10 Nov 25.1 °C 57 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
11 Nov 24.4 °C 60 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Nov 23.7 °C 58 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
13 Nov 23.1 °C 60 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
14 Nov 23.9 °C 45 % 38 km/h 4.2 mm Low 6
15 Nov 23.3 °C 57 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
16 Nov 22.1 °C 60 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
17 Nov 23.6 °C 47 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
18 Nov 24.2 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
19 Nov 24.0 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
20 Nov 24.5 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
21 Nov 25.6 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Nov 25.8 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Nov 26.7 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Nov after 26.8 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Nov after 26.9 °C 27 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Nov after 26.7 °C 31 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Nov after 26.8 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
28 Nov after 26.8 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Nov after 26.6 °C 34 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Nov after 26.3 °C 30 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Dec after 26.4 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Dec after 25.8 °C 28 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Dec after 24.7 °C 32 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Dec after 23.0 °C 36 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Dec after 22.6 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Dec after 23.4 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Dec after 23.6 °C 16 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Dec after 26.2 °C 20 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Dec after 26.0 °C 24 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Nov 2017
After · 30 Nov 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 · 310Every 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 Fazilka fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 November 2017 and 23 November 2017: 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 5,259 hectares (52.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Fazilka (3,557 ha, 3.0 %); Jalalabad (1,722 ha, 3.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.9 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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. 310 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.