How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2017 and 4 September 2017: 7 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 2,686 hectares (26.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (2,690 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

PY · Paraguay · 2017-08-29 → 2017-09-04

Benjamín Aceval fire, 29 August 2017 Benjamín Aceval

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2017, 17:11 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2017 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,686 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 299th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 57 in Paraguay in 2017, of 261.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.9 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: Benjamín Aceval · 2023 General Jose Maria Bruguez · 2020 Benjamín Aceval · 2020 Villa Hayes · 2023

Burnt area: 2,686ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 29 Aug 2017 – 4 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 63MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug4 Sept

Play back 4 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug 1 Sept 2 Sept 3 Sept 4 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

55km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 10 Sept.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,018 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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

Benjamín Aceval where it started

2,690 ha reached on 29 Aug

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)
25 Aug	35.5 °C	31 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
26 Aug	36.1 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
27 Aug	33.5 °C	45 %	45 km/h	2.2 mm	Moderate 12
28 Aug	37.5 °C	29 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Aug	37.7 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Aug	27.1 °C	47 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Aug	26.0 °C	46 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
1 Sept	35.4 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Sept	37.1 °C	26 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Sept	36.6 °C	25 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Sept	35.6 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Sept after	18.3 °C	69 %	50 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 20
6 Sept after	29.1 °C	45 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
7 Sept after	35.9 °C	23 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
8 Sept after	36.2 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Sept after	37.7 °C	26 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
10 Sept after	37.7 °C	30 %	86 km/h	3.6 mm	Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Aug 2017

After · 11 Sept 2017

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 · 74Every 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 Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2017 and 4 September 2017: 7 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 2,686 hectares (26.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (2,690 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (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: 132 · 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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?

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 132 · 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. 74 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (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