How long did the Bagaces fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 February 2022 and 24 February 2022: 5 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 1,941 hectares (19.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bagaces (1,110 ha, 0.9 %); Liberia (842 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

CR · Costa Rica · 2022-02-20 → 2022-02-24

Bagaces fire, 20 February 2022 Bagaces, Liberia

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2022, 07:19 UTC

The fire started on 20 February 2022 in Bagaces, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,941 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 41th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 7 in Costa Rica in 2022, of 15.

The power measured by the satellite is low (29.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liberia · 2019 Carrillo · 2022 Carrillo · 2020 Carrillo · 2026

Burnt area: 1,941ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 20 Feb 2022 – 24 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; cantons
Started on: 20 Feb; 2022
Heat detections: 70; in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 106MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Feb24 Feb

Play back 24 Feb 2022

How it evolved, day by day

20 Feb 21 Feb 22 Feb 23 Feb 24 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

32°high

62km/h · peak gust

41%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,344 ha in 2019.

1,344 ha Liberia fire, March 2019 2,944 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 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

Bagaces where it started

1,110 ha reached on 20 Feb

0.9 %
Liberia

842 ha reached on 21 Feb

0.6 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
20 Feb	31.7 °C	41 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
21 Feb	31.8 °C	43 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
22 Feb	31.5 °C	44 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Feb	31.8 °C	46 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Feb	32.1 °C	44 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Feb after	31.9 °C	42 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Feb after	31.5 °C	39 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Feb after	31.9 °C	42 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
28 Feb after	32.6 °C	40 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
1 Mar after	31.7 °C	46 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Mar after	31.7 °C	47 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Mar after	32.1 °C	47 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Mar after	31.2 °C	49 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Mar after	31.6 °C	48 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
6 Mar after	33.1 °C	46 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 13 Feb 2022

After · 3 Mar 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 · 70Every 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 Costa Rica ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bagaces fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 February 2022 and 24 February 2022: 5 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 1,941 hectares (19.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bagaces (1,110 ha, 0.9 %); Liberia (842 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 41 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Costa Rica (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

CNE · Comisión Nacional de Emergencias ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 70 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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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