How long did the Benjamín Aceval fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2023 to 23 September 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2023 to 18 September 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,113 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (2,120 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

PY · Paraguay · 2023-09-17 → 2023-09-23

Benjamín Aceval fire, 17 September 2023 Benjamín Aceval

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2023, 18:15 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2023 in Benjamín Aceval, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,113 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 431th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 738 with a page). Number 116 in Paraguay in 2023, of 209.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 2,113ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 17 Sept 2023 – 23 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 17 Sept; 2023
Heat detections: 70; in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 111MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept23 Sept

Play back 23 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 23 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

41°high

59km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 799 ha in 2016, 483 ha in 2017, 626 ha in 2020, 698 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,502 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

2,120 ha reached on 17 Sept

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area1.6 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
17 Sept	38.6 °C	29 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
18 Sept	35.8 °C	35 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
19 Sept	27.7 °C	59 %	44 km/h	1.5 mm	Low 5
20 Sept	34.6 °C	43 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
21 Sept	38.4 °C	33 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Sept	40.3 °C	27 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Sept	40.7 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Sept after	40.6 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Sept after	39.4 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Sept after	38.3 °C	32 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Sept after	20.4 °C	58 %	54 km/h	3.3 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Sept 2023

After · 30 Sept 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 19 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 60 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 27: 1.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak60 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM1086 µg/m³

Optical depth1.18

WHO 15

15161718192021

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 70Every 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 17 September 2023 to 23 September 2023 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2023 to 18 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,113 hectares (21.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Benjamín Aceval (2,120 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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

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 Last day with fire: 18 September 2023 → 23 September 2023.

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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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2023 to 18 September 2023. 70 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 2025, 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