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Camaguán fire, March 2018 Camaguán

Out · last detection 24 Mar 2018, 17:51 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2018 in Camaguán, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,785 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 271th largest in Guárico since 2016 (of 421 with a page). Number 76 in Venezuela in 2018, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Francisco de Miranda · 2020Francisco de Miranda · 2022Francisco de Miranda · 2023Francisco de Miranda · 2020

Burnt area
1,785ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
13 Mar 2018 – 24 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Mar
2018
Heat detections
44
in a single hotspot: 62 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
70MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar24 Mar
24 Mar 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Mar 2018 · 41 MW · 8 18 Mar 2018 · 43 MW · 4 19 Mar 2018 · 215 MW · 19 20 Mar 2018 · 107 MW · 10 22 Mar 2018 · 1 MW · 1 24 Mar 2018 · 15 MW · 2
17 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar 22 Mar 24 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
48km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.3 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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

  1. Camaguán 24,391 inhabitants where it started
    1,797 ha reached on 17 Mar
    1.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
16 Mar 38.4 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Mar 37.9 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Mar 39.3 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Mar 39.4 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Mar 38.4 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Mar 39.0 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Mar 37.5 °C 32 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Mar 38.6 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Mar 38.5 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Mar after 39.3 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Mar after 39.2 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Mar after 39.0 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.7 mm High 37
28 Mar after 38.6 °C 27 % 46 km/h 2.3 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2018
After · 31 Mar 2018

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 · 44Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Camaguán fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2018 to 24 March 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 March 2018 to 22 March 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,785 hectares (17.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Camaguán (1,797 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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: 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 March 2018 → 24 March 2018.
  2. Start date: 16 March 2018 → 13 March 2018.

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?

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 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 16 March 2018 to 22 March 2018. 44 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.