How long did the Autónomo Manapiare fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 February 2016 to 8 March 2016 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 February 2016 to 2 March 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,623 hectares (56.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Autónomo Manapiare (5,664 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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 · 2016-02-26 → 2016-03-08

Autónomo Manapiare fire, 26 February 2016 Autónomo Manapiare

Out · last detection 6 Mar 2016, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 26 February 2016 in Autónomo Manapiare, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,623 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 2th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 50 with a page). Number 20 in Venezuela in 2016, of 238.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Autónomo Manapiare · 2019 Autónomo Manapiare · 2026 Autónomo Manapiare · 2016 Autónomo Manapiare · 2020

Burnt area: 5,623ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 26 Feb 2016 – 8 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 26 Feb; 2016
Heat detections: 190; in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start: 21; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 154MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Feb8 Mar

Play back 6 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

26 Feb 28 Feb 29 Feb 1 Mar 4 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

39°high

28km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.9 mm on 14 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (56 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

Autónomo Manapiare 7,715 inhabitants where it started

5,664 ha reached on 26 Feb

0.2 %

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.

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)
26 Feb	36.8 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
27 Feb	37.4 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
28 Feb	38.0 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
29 Feb	37.5 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
1 Mar	37.4 °C	31 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
2 Mar	35.6 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	High 23
3 Mar	36.7 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
4 Mar	38.0 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Mar	39.3 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Mar	38.3 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 Mar	38.5 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Mar	39.5 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Mar after	37.9 °C	28 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Mar after	38.3 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
11 Mar after	39.3 °C	27 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Mar after	35.0 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Mar after	36.7 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.8 mm	High 22
14 Mar after	34.5 °C	54 %	28 km/h	7.9 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Feb 2016

After · 15 Mar 2016

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 · 190Every 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 Autónomo Manapiare fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 February 2016 to 8 March 2016 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 February 2016 to 2 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,623 hectares (56.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Autónomo Manapiare (5,664 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, class 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 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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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 26 February 2016 to 2 March 2016. 190 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.

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