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Itarsi fire, April 2022 Itarsi, Hoshangabad, Babai

Out · last measured on 9 Apr 2022

The fire started on 2 April 2022 in Itarsi, India, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,626 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Madhya Pradesh since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 10 in India in 2022, of 25.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Seoni-Malwa · 2020Hoshangabad · 2021Babai · 2021Dolariya · 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
8,626ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
2 Apr 2022 – 9 Apr 2022
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
2 Apr
2022
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

42°high
24km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,888 ha in 2016, 3,307 ha in 2017, 2,867 ha in 2018, 2,325 ha in 2019, 5,471 ha in 2020, 6,296 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,736 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (86 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. Itarsi where it started
    7,294 ha
    7.4 %
  2. Hoshangabad
    1,099 ha
    5.2 %
  3. Babai
    281 ha
    0.4 %

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 area51 ha
Residents≈ 15,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 51 hectares of built-up land and about 15,000 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)
2 Apr 39.8 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
3 Apr 40.1 °C 17 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Apr 40.3 °C 15 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Apr 40.4 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Apr 41.0 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Apr 40.9 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Apr 41.3 °C 16 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Apr 41.6 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Apr after 41.4 °C 16 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Apr after 41.0 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Apr after 40.5 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Apr after 40.7 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Apr after 40.3 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Apr after 40.9 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Apr after 40.6 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Apr after 40.7 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Apr after 41.2 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Apr after 41.8 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Mar 2022
After · 16 Apr 2022

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 Itarsi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 April 2022 and 9 April 2022: 8 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 8,626 hectares (86.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Itarsi (7,294 ha, 7.4 %); Hoshangabad (1,099 ha, 5.2 %); Babai (281 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 24 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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.