How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2020 to 13 October 2020 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 September 2020 to 13 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,409 hectares (274.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Benjamín Aceval (20,365 ha, 1.8 %); Villa Hayes (7,177 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2020-09-19 → 2020-10-13

Benjamín Aceval fire, 19 September 2020 Benjamín Aceval, Villa Hayes

Out · last detection 13 Oct 2020, 05:02 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2020 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 27,409 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 8 in Paraguay in 2020, of 424.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Benjamín Aceval · 2024 Benjamín Aceval · 2020 Villa Hayes · 2022 Villa Hayes · 2022

Burnt area: 27,409ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 25days; 19 Sept 2020 – 13 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 19 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 1,306; in a single hotspot: 328 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 887MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept13 Oct

Play back 13 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 24 Sept 28 Sept 2 Oct 6 Oct 10 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

42°high

64km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 14 Oct.

This area had burned before

25% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,399 ha in 2016, 1,626 ha in 2017, 3,765 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,819 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (274 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

20,365 ha reached on 19 Sept

1.8 %
Villa Hayes

7,177 ha reached on 19 Sept

0.4 %

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 area1.2 ha

Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 70 residents (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)
19 Sept	33.9 °C	19 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Sept	25.4 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
21 Sept	24.0 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
22 Sept	29.3 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
23 Sept	32.4 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
24 Sept	35.7 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Sept	39.2 °C	24 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
26 Sept	40.2 °C	23 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Sept	36.2 °C	36 %	64 km/h	5.9 mm	Moderate 16
28 Sept	25.2 °C	41 %	44 km/h	5.2 mm	Very low 4
29 Sept	36.5 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
30 Sept	39.8 °C	28 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Oct	41.5 °C	23 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
2 Oct	39.3 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Oct	28.7 °C	48 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
4 Oct	28.9 °C	46 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
5 Oct	27.9 °C	42 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
6 Oct	31.8 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
7 Oct	37.6 °C	33 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
8 Oct	38.2 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Oct	32.1 °C	36 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Oct	33.3 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Oct	36.1 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Oct	37.0 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Oct	34.3 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Oct after	36.0 °C	37 %	50 km/h	2.2 mm	High 22

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Sept 2020

After · 20 Oct 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 · 1,306Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2020 to 13 October 2020 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 September 2020 to 13 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 27,409 hectares (274.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Benjamín Aceval (20,365 ha, 1.8 %); Villa Hayes (7,177 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 23 September 2020 → 19 September 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?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 September 2020 to 13 October 2020. 1,306 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.

Where it burned