How long did the Itwa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 April 2021 and 15 April 2021: 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 5,196 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Itwa (4,536 ha, 8.1 %); Domariyaganj (680 ha, 1.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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.

IN · India · 2021-04-09 → 2021-04-15

Itwa fire, April 2021 Itwa, Domariyaganj

Out · last measured on 15 Apr 2021

The fire started on 9 April 2021 in Itwa, India, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,196 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 29th largest in Uttar Pradesh since 2016 (of 30 with a page). Number 72 in India in 2021, of 78.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Itwa · 2019 Itwa · 2022 Itwa · 2022 Itwa · 2023

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: 5,196ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 9 Apr 2021 – 15 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; subdistricts
Started on: 9 Apr; 2021
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index

The weather it burned in

40°high

48km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 22 Apr.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,129 ha in 2016, 3,606 ha in 2017, 2,556 ha in 2018, 3,619 ha in 2019, 427 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,104 ha that had burned before.

3,180 ha Itwa fire, April 2019 19,834 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

Itwa where it started

4,536 ha

8.1 %
Domariyaganj

680 ha

1.2 %

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.

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)
9 Apr	37.4 °C	23 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
10 Apr	38.4 °C	13 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
11 Apr	38.6 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
12 Apr	39.0 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
13 Apr	39.2 °C	16 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
14 Apr	40.1 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
15 Apr	38.5 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
16 Apr after	38.5 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
17 Apr after	36.3 °C	33 %	33 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 41
18 Apr after	37.6 °C	21 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
19 Apr after	38.2 °C	15 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 70
20 Apr after	39.8 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Apr after	34.1 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
22 Apr after	33.4 °C	30 %	37 km/h	1.6 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Apr 2021

After · 22 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.

Other fires nearby

All fires in India ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Itwa fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 April 2021 and 15 April 2021: 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 5,196 hectares (52.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Itwa (4,536 ha, 8.1 %); Domariyaganj (680 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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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 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.

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.

Where it burned