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IN · India · –

S' Bungtlang fire, March 2026 S' Bungtlang, Chawngte, Lawngtlai

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2026, 06:57 UTC

The fire started on 10 March 2026 in S' Bungtlang, India, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,681 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 32 in India in 2026, of 58.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
6,681ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
10 Mar 2026 – 19 Mar 2026
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
10 Mar
2026
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Average daily power
253MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Mar19 Mar
17 Mar 2026

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 2026 · 111 MW · 7 11 Mar 2026 · 4 MW · 1 12 Mar 2026 · 1,005 MW · 41 14 Mar 2026 · 301 MW · 32 15 Mar 2026 · 249 MW · 15 16 Mar 2026 · 71 MW · 6 17 Mar 2026 · 31 MW · 3
10 Mar 12 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
46km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,365 ha in 2016, 2,218 ha in 2017, 3,329 ha in 2018, 3,834 ha in 2019, 2,787 ha in 2020, 4,518 ha in 2021, 3,583 ha in 2022, 2,144 ha in 2023, 3,599 ha in 2024, 4,521 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,515 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (67 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. S' Bungtlang where it started
    5,022 ha reached on 10 Mar
    9.3 %
  2. 895 ha reached on 14 Mar
    1.4 %
  3. 802 ha reached on 12 Mar
    0.8 %

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 2025
Built-up area8.1 ha
Residents≈ 2,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.1 hectares of built-up land and about 2,900 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
5 Mar 33.3 °C 34 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Mar 35.7 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Mar 35.5 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Mar 33.8 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Mar 33.5 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
10 Mar 34.9 °C 32 % 27 km/h 1.1 mm High 23
11 Mar 34.1 °C 45 % 34 km/h 2.3 mm Low 11
12 Mar 33.4 °C 46 % 27 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 12
13 Mar 31.4 °C 39 % 42 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 19
14 Mar 31.4 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 21
15 Mar 33.8 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
16 Mar 32.7 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
17 Mar 33.2 °C 26 % 46 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 20
18 Mar 34.6 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Mar 35.5 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
20 Mar after 33.6 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Mar after 30.0 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.5 mm High 25
22 Mar after 31.4 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
23 Mar after 32.5 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Mar after 34.0 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Mar after 35.0 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Mar after 36.1 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Mar after 37.5 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Mar after 32.5 °C 38 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Mar 2026
After · 26 Mar 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 164 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 113: 7.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak164 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10176 µg/m³
Optical depth1.95
8 Mar11 Mar14 Mar17 Mar20 Mar
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 105Every 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 S' Bungtlang fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 March 2026 and 19 March 2026: 10 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 6,681 hectares (66.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: S' Bungtlang (5,022 ha, 9.3 %); Chawngte (895 ha, 1.4 %); Lawngtlai (802 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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. 105 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 2025, 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.