Balzar fire, November 2020 Balzar
The fire started on 14 November 2020 in Balzar, Ecuador, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,041 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
Number 12 in Ecuador in 2020, of 14.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Palenque · 2022Vinces · 2025
- Burnt area
- 1,041ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 14 Nov 2020 – 17 Nov 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- cantons
- Started on
- 14 Nov
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 26
- in a single hotspot: 32 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 92MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.9 mm on 20 Nov.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Balzar where it started1,048 ha reached on 14 Nov0.9 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Nov | 34.5 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 15 Nov | 33.5 °C | 40 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 16 Nov | 32.8 °C | 38 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 17 Nov | 32.7 °C | 39 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 18 Nov after | 30.4 °C | 47 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 19 Nov after | 29.3 °C | 54 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Nov after | 31.3 °C | 48 % | 20 km/h | 5.9 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 26Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Balzar fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2020 and 17 November 2020: 4 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 1,041 hectares (10.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Balzar (1,048 ha, 0.9 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 27, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ecuador (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
Satellite cross-check
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
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. 26 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.
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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.