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Campana fire, February 2023 Campana, Zárate

Out · last detection 25 Feb 2023, 04:48 UTC

The fire started on 1 February 2023 in Campana, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,991 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 41th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 28 in Argentina in 2023, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Campana · 2021Campana · 2021Campana · 2022Islas del Ibicuy · 2023

Burnt area
4,991ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
1 Feb 2023 – 25 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
2
departments
Started on
1 Feb
2023
Heat detections
474
in a single hotspot: 171 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
169MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Feb25 Feb
25 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

1 Feb 2023 · 2 MW · 2 3 Feb 2023 · 5 MW · 4 4 Feb 2023 · 7 MW · 3 5 Feb 2023 · 161 MW · 15 6 Feb 2023 · 330 MW · 18 7 Feb 2023 · 314 MW · 21 8 Feb 2023 · 235 MW · 30 9 Feb 2023 · 226 MW · 48 10 Feb 2023 · 160 MW · 25 11 Feb 2023 · 411 MW · 33 12 Feb 2023 · 568 MW · 34 13 Feb 2023 · 155 MW · 50 14 Feb 2023 · 8 MW · 6 15 Feb 2023 · 181 MW · 15 16 Feb 2023 · 23 MW · 14 17 Feb 2023 · 49 MW · 17 18 Feb 2023 · 556 MW · 38 19 Feb 2023 · 199 MW · 46 20 Feb 2023 · 31 MW · 12 21 Feb 2023 · 267 MW · 11 22 Feb 2023 · 87 MW · 14 23 Feb 2023 · 9 MW · 8 24 Feb 2023 · 65 MW · 4 25 Feb 2023 · 7 MW · 6
1 Feb 6 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 18 Feb 22 Feb

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
66km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 3 Mar.

This area had burned before

65% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 390 ha in 2020, 3,406 ha in 2021, 398 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,227 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Campana 94,333 inhabitants where it started
    4,908 ha reached on 1 Feb
    5.0 %
  2. Zárate 111,597 inhabitants
    85 ha
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.31 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
1 Feb 29.5 °C 55 % 43 km/h 10.8 mm Very low 2
2 Feb 26.0 °C 64 % 30 km/h 42.0 mm Very low 0
3 Feb 26.8 °C 54 % 49 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 1
4 Feb 27.6 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
5 Feb 30.1 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
6 Feb 32.7 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
7 Feb 35.5 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
8 Feb 30.2 °C 46 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
9 Feb 33.6 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
10 Feb 35.9 °C 30 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
11 Feb 37.5 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Feb 39.2 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Feb 30.3 °C 41 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
14 Feb 32.2 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
15 Feb 30.7 °C 37 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
16 Feb 26.6 °C 49 % 60 km/h 3.5 mm Low 8
17 Feb 16.2 °C 52 % 66 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
18 Feb 22.9 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
19 Feb 26.8 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
20 Feb 29.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
21 Feb 31.6 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Feb 32.5 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
23 Feb 27.7 °C 57 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm Low 6
24 Feb 30.7 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
25 Feb 33.0 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Feb after 29.5 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
27 Feb after 32.5 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
28 Feb after 36.6 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Mar after 37.0 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Mar after 36.8 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
3 Mar after 35.4 °C 36 % 30 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Jan 2023
After · 4 Mar 2023

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 14 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 202 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 90: 6.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak202 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10289 µg/m³
Optical depth1.00
3031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
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 · 474Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Campana fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 February 2023 to 25 February 2023 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2023 to 24 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,991 hectares (49.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Campana (4,908 ha, 5.0 %); Zárate (85 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 February 2023 → 25 February 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.

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 · 100.

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 1 February 2023 to 24 February 2023. 474 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.