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Wajedu fire, March 2021 Wajedu, Venkatapuram, Usur

Out · last measured on 11 Mar 2021

The fire started on 3 March 2021 in Wajedu, India, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,057 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Telangāna since 2016 (of 17 with a page). Number 58 in India in 2021, of 77.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wajedu · 2026Wajedu · 2022Usur · 2026Usur · 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
6,057ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
3 Mar 2021 – 11 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
3
subdistricts
Started on
3 Mar
2021
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

37°high
30km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,659 ha in 2016, 2,691 ha in 2017, 786 ha in 2018, 3,487 ha in 2019, 1,874 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,266 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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. Wajedu where it started
    3,898 ha
    7.2 %
  2. Venkatapuram
    2,156 ha
    3.2 %
  3. Usur
    37 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
3 Mar 37.3 °C 17 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Mar 36.9 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Mar 36.8 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Mar 36.5 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Mar 37.0 °C 23 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Mar 36.7 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Mar 35.9 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Mar 36.3 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Mar 35.8 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Mar after 35.7 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Mar after 35.2 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Mar after 35.5 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Mar after 36.1 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Mar after 36.7 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Mar after 36.5 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Mar after 34.9 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Mar after 34.7 °C 34 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Mar after 34.7 °C 35 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Mar after 36.5 °C 29 % 20 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 · 24 Feb 2021
After · 18 Mar 2021

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 Wajedu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 March 2021 and 11 March 2021: 9 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 6,057 hectares (60.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Wajedu (3,898 ha, 7.2 %); Venkatapuram (2,156 ha, 3.2 %); Usur (37 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

Report an error
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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.