Caapucu fire, 17 December 2022 Villa Oliva, Villa Franca, Caapucu
The fire started on 17 December 2022 in Caapucu, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,651 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 54th largest in Paraguarí since 2016 (of 68 with a page). Number 160 in Paraguay in 2022, of 185.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,651ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 17 Dec 2022 – 30 Dec 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 17 Dec
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 70
- in a single hotspot: 38 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 94MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 25 Dec.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,035 ha in 2018, 65 ha in 2019, 2,517 ha in 2020, 858 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,658 ha that had burned before.
- 1,035 ha Villa Oliva fire, August 2018 7,903 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 858 ha Villa Oliva fire, December 2021 58,707 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 790 ha Villa Oliva fire, October 2020 6,465 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 401 ha Villa Oliva fire, August 2020 12,456 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 236 ha Caapucu fire, September 2020 2,532 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 8 ha Villa Oliva fire, June 2020 3,062 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,127 ha reached on 18 Dec0.7 %
-
300 ha reached on 20 Dec0.2 %
-
Caapucu where it started232 ha reached on 17 Dec0.1 %
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 2020Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 17 Dec | 32.3 °C | 37 % | 34 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 18 Dec | 33.4 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.1 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 19 Dec | 34.5 °C | 31 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 20 Dec | 35.4 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 21 Dec | 36.1 °C | 32 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 22 Dec | 35.9 °C | 32 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 23 Dec | 36.0 °C | 31 % | 45 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 30 |
| 24 Dec | 33.6 °C | 43 % | 28 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 25 Dec | 33.5 °C | 44 % | 34 km/h | 5.1 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 20 December 2022 the air beside the fire reached 13 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 7,903 haVilla Oliva28 August 2018 · 3 days · 5 km away
- 12,456 haVilla OlivaAugust 2020 · 18 days · 11 km away
- 13,060 haVilla OlivaFebruary 2020 · 21 days · 17 km away
- 16,508 haVilla OlivaFebruary 2022 · 31 days · 20 km away
- 21,230 haVilla OlivaJuly 2020 · 14 days · 22 km away
- 58,707 haVilla OlivaDecember 2021 · 51 days · 25 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Caapucu fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 December 2022 to 30 December 2022 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2022 to 23 December 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,651 hectares (16.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Villa Oliva (1,127 ha, 0.7 %); Villa Franca (300 ha, 0.2 %); Caapucu (232 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
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 December 2022 to 23 December 2022. 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.