How long did the Arauca fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 April 2024 to 17 April 2024 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 April 2024 to 16 April 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,084 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arauca (1,815 ha, 0.3 %); Arauquita (1,289 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

CO · Colombia · 2024-04-10 → 2024-04-17

Arauca fire, 10 April 2024 Arauca, Arauquita

Out · last detection 16 Apr 2024, 06:17 UTC

The fire started on 10 April 2024 in Arauca, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 36th largest in Arauca since 2016 (of 107 with a page). Number 23 in Colombia in 2024, of 73.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Arauquita · 2019 Arauca · 2020 Arauca · 2020 Arauquita · 2016

Burnt area: 3,084ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 10 Apr 2024 – 17 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 10 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 91; in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 125MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Apr17 Apr

Play back 16 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

10 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 13 Apr 14 Apr 15 Apr 16 Apr

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

33km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.8 mm on 18 Apr.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,695 ha in 2019, 322 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,752 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Arauca where it started

1,815 ha reached on 10 Apr

0.3 %
Arauquita

1,289 ha reached on 11 Apr

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

Official record

According to UNGRD, a fire of 1,300 ha was recorded in Arauquita on 11 April 2024 (the satellite measured 3,084 ha). The record has no coordinates, so it was matched by municipality and date. The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Arauquita 11 April 2024 1,300 ha

UNGRD (Unidad Nacional para la Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres), emergencias 2023-2024 en datos.gov.co (CC BY-SA 4.0). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.

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 Apr	36.2 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
11 Apr	35.5 °C	42 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
12 Apr	36.3 °C	37 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Apr	34.8 °C	45 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Apr	36.1 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 Apr	35.4 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 Apr	36.3 °C	41 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
17 Apr	35.8 °C	46 %	33 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 19
18 Apr after	29.0 °C	79 %	26 km/h	22.8 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Apr 2024

After · 24 Apr 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 16 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 127 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 89: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak127 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM10182 µg/m³

Optical depth2.38

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 · 91Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Arauca fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 April 2024 to 17 April 2024 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 April 2024 to 16 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,084 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arauca (1,815 ha, 0.3 %); Arauquita (1,289 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

UNGRD · Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres ↗
IDEAM ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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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 123 · 119.

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 April 2024 to 16 April 2024. 91 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with UNGRD: 1,300 official ha against 3,084 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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