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Benjamín Aceval fire, 6 March 2020 Benjamín Aceval

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2020, 18:01 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2020 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,018 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 236th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 146 in Paraguay in 2020, of 424.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Benjamín Aceval · 2016Benjamín Aceval · 2020Benjamín Aceval · 2020Benjamín Aceval · 2023

Burnt area
3,018ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
6 Mar 2020 – 12 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
6 Mar
2020
Heat detections
86
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
172MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar12 Mar
12 Mar 2020

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 2020 · 24 MW · 2 8 Mar 2020 · 166 MW · 11 9 Mar 2020 · 10 MW · 4 10 Mar 2020 · 56 MW · 6 11 Mar 2020 · 583 MW · 45 12 Mar 2020 · 191 MW · 18
6 Mar 8 Mar 9 Mar 10 Mar 11 Mar 12 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
39km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 18 Mar.

This area had burned before

49% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,417 ha in 2016, 23 ha in 2018, 140 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,493 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

  1. Benjamín Aceval where it started
    3,028 ha reached on 6 Mar
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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

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)
6 Mar 36.0 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
7 Mar 37.7 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Mar 38.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Mar 38.4 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Mar 38.6 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Mar 38.2 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Mar 39.2 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Mar after 39.8 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Mar after 39.8 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Mar after 36.2 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Mar after 34.9 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Mar after 36.3 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Mar after 31.8 °C 60 % 40 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Feb 2020
After · 19 Mar 2020

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 · 86Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 March 2020 to 12 March 2020 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 March 2020 to 12 March 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,018 hectares (30.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (3,028 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 8 March 2020 → 6 March 2020.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 March 2020 to 12 March 2020. 86 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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 (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.