How long did the Achaguas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 March 2024 to 23 March 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 March 2024 to 16 March 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,810 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Achaguas (4,844 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2024-03-10 → 2024-03-23

Achaguas fire, 10 March 2024 Achaguas

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2024, 18:11 UTC

The fire started on 10 March 2024 in Achaguas, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,810 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 99th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 51 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Achaguas · 2016 Achaguas · 2023 Achaguas · 2020 Achaguas · 2026

Burnt area: 4,810ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 10 Mar 2024 – 23 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 10 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 195; in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 95MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Mar23 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2024

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 16 Mar 18 Mar 21 Mar 23 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

40°high

42km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 2 Apr.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 54 ha in 2016, 4 ha in 2017, 1 ha in 2020, 835 ha in 2021, 1,027 ha in 2022, 894 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,084 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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

4,844 ha reached on 10 Mar

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
10 Mar	38.0 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Mar	40.0 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
12 Mar	39.2 °C	27 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
13 Mar	39.2 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
14 Mar	39.2 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
15 Mar	38.8 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Mar	39.4 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
17 Mar	39.0 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 Mar	39.1 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Mar	37.3 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Mar	39.7 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Mar	39.8 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
22 Mar	38.0 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Mar	38.2 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Mar after	37.8 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
25 Mar after	37.9 °C	35 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Mar after	38.2 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Mar after	38.0 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Mar after	37.7 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Mar after	38.7 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Mar after	36.6 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
31 Mar after	37.2 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Apr after	37.9 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 42
2 Apr after	34.2 °C	48 %	37 km/h	1.1 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Mar 2024

After · 30 Mar 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak54 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM1078 µg/m³

Optical depth1.37

WHO 15

8910111213141516171819

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 · 195Every 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 10 March 2024 to 23 March 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 March 2024 to 16 March 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,810 hectares (48.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Achaguas (4,844 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 16 March 2024 → 23 March 2024.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 10 March 2024 to 16 March 2024. 195 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 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