How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 July 2020 and 23 July 2020: 3 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 3,703 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (3,709 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · 2020-07-21 → 2020-07-23

Benjamín Aceval fire, 21 July 2020 Benjamín Aceval

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2020, 18:07 UTC

The fire started on 21 July 2020 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,703 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 163th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 102 in Paraguay in 2020, of 424.

Compare with…

Suggestions: General Jose Maria Bruguez · 2020 Benjamín Aceval · 2020 General Jose Maria Bruguez · 2026 Benjamín Aceval · 2023

Burnt area: 3,703ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 21 Jul 2020 – 23 Jul 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 21 Jul; 2020
Heat detections: 114; in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 813MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jul23 Jul

Play back 23 Jul 2020

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jul 22 Jul 23 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

55km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.1 mm on 24 Jul.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 999 ha in 2017, 86 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 926 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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

3,709 ha reached on 17 Jul

0.3 %

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)
17 Jul	34.6 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
18 Jul	35.0 °C	23 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
19 Jul	34.8 °C	23 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
20 Jul	34.7 °C	24 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
21 Jul	34.4 °C	24 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
22 Jul	34.3 °C	24 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
23 Jul	33.2 °C	26 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Jul after	20.6 °C	65 %	48 km/h	3.1 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Jul 2020

After · 30 Jul 2020

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 · 114Every 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 21 July 2020 and 23 July 2020: 3 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 3,703 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (3,709 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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. 114 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