Skip to content
worldfires
PY · Paraguay · →

Benjamín Aceval fire, 1 August 2020 Benjamín Aceval

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2020, 17:30 UTC

The fire started on 1 August 2020 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,272 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 138th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 93 in Paraguay in 2020, of 424.

Burnt area
4,272ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
1 Aug 2020 – 9 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
1 Aug
2020
Heat detections
149
in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Energy released
1.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Aug9 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

12345678910

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
49km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.7 mm on 12 Aug.

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 109 ha in 2016, 1,808 ha in 2017, 915 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,448 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Benjamín Aceval where it started
    4,294 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.4 %

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)
31 Jul 28.5 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
1 Aug 32.9 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Aug 33.6 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
3 Aug 33.5 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Aug 33.6 °C 23 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug 33.7 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Aug 33.9 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug 33.9 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Aug 33.8 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Aug 34.0 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
10 Aug after 35.2 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Aug after 24.2 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Aug after 14.6 °C 56 % 38 km/h 13.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jul 2020
After · 16 Aug 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 · 149Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 August 2020 and 9 August 2020: 9 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 4,272 hectares (42.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (4,294 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

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.

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.