How long did the Achaguas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 March 2022 to 27 March 2022 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 March 2022 to 24 March 2022.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,278 hectares (72.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Achaguas (7,329 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

VE · Venezuela · 2022-03-02 → 2022-03-27

Achaguas fire, 2 March 2022 Achaguas

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2022, 17:02 UTC

The fire started on 2 March 2022 in Achaguas, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,278 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 8 in Venezuela in 2022, of 205.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Achaguas · 2020 Achaguas · 2019 Achaguas · 2021 Achaguas · 2024

Burnt area: 7,278ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 2 Mar 2022 – 27 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 2 Mar; 2022
Heat detections: 270; in a single hotspot: 249 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 155MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Mar27 Mar

Play back 27 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

2 Mar 7 Mar 11 Mar 14 Mar 15 Mar 20 Mar 24 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

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 4 Apr.

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 814 ha in 2019, 3,025 ha in 2020, 784 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,196 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.6% of the area of London (73 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

Achaguas 28,966 inhabitants where it started

7,329 ha reached on 2 Mar

0.5 %

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 area0.13 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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 Mar	35.8 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
3 Mar	35.8 °C	40 %	43 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
4 Mar	37.5 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
5 Mar	35.6 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Mar	35.3 °C	36 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
7 Mar	35.9 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Mar	36.1 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.3 mm	High 36
9 Mar	35.7 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
10 Mar	35.3 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.6 mm	High 30
11 Mar	35.5 °C	39 %	38 km/h	2.0 mm	Moderate 21
12 Mar	36.8 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Mar	36.7 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
14 Mar	33.3 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Mar	36.3 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Mar	35.0 °C	42 %	46 km/h	1.8 mm	High 23
17 Mar	36.4 °C	38 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Mar	36.9 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
19 Mar	37.2 °C	30 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 41
20 Mar	35.9 °C	37 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
21 Mar	37.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Mar	36.6 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 Mar	37.7 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Mar	36.7 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Mar	35.4 °C	38 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Mar	37.1 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Mar	37.8 °C	30 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
28 Mar after	35.4 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Mar after	35.8 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
30 Mar after	37.4 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Mar after	36.5 °C	28 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Apr after	38.4 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
2 Apr after	38.1 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
3 Apr after	35.9 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
4 Apr after	34.4 °C	48 %	24 km/h	3.2 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Feb 2022

After · 3 Apr 2022

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.

Detections table · 270Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Achaguas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 March 2022 to 27 March 2022 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 March 2022 to 24 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,278 hectares (72.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Achaguas (7,329 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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: 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Protección Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 March 2022 → 27 March 2022.
25 October 2026 Start date: 7 March 2022 → 2 March 2022.

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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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 911.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 March 2022 to 24 March 2022. 270 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 ADM2 (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