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Carrillo fire, February 2017 Santa Cruz, Carrillo

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2017, 19:21 UTC

The fire started on 28 February 2017 in Carrillo, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,618 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). The largest in Costa Rica in 2017, of 10.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carrillo · 2019Carrillo · 2026Carrillo · 2020Carrillo · 2022

Burnt area
4,618ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
28 Feb 2017 – 27 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
2
cantons
Started on
28 Feb
2017
Heat detections
181
in a single hotspot: 150 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
61MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Feb27 Mar
27 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

28 Feb 2017 · 8 MW · 2 1 Mar 2017 · 9 MW · 2 2 Mar 2017 · 5 MW · 1 4 Mar 2017 · 146 MW · 14 5 Mar 2017 · 134 MW · 16 6 Mar 2017 · 167 MW · 28 7 Mar 2017 · 112 MW · 18 8 Mar 2017 · 44 MW · 12 9 Mar 2017 · 17 MW · 5 10 Mar 2017 · 9 MW · 3 11 Mar 2017 · 7 MW · 2 12 Mar 2017 · 58 MW · 9 13 Mar 2017 · 36 MW · 6 14 Mar 2017 · 2 MW · 1 15 Mar 2017 · 6 MW · 4 16 Mar 2017 · 5 MW · 1 17 Mar 2017 · 604 MW · 22 19 Mar 2017 · 28 MW · 4 20 Mar 2017 · 17 MW · 4 21 Mar 2017 · 29 MW · 5 22 Mar 2017 · 67 MW · 9 23 Mar 2017 · 30 MW · 7 24 Mar 2017 · 36 MW · 2 25 Mar 2017 · 2 MW · 2 26 Mar 2017 · 1 MW · 1 27 Mar 2017 · 3 MW · 1
28 Feb 5 Mar 9 Mar 13 Mar 17 Mar 22 Mar 26 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

35°high
71km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.0 mm on 2 Apr.

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 2.9% of the area of London (46 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. Santa Cruz
    3,422 ha reached on 4 Mar
    2.6 %
  2. Carrillo where it started
    1,227 ha reached on 28 Feb
    2.0 %

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.

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)
28 Feb 33.7 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Mar 34.0 °C 40 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
2 Mar 33.2 °C 42 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Mar 33.4 °C 41 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
4 Mar 32.7 °C 38 % 71 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Mar 33.1 °C 40 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Mar 32.6 °C 46 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Mar 34.5 °C 40 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Mar 33.5 °C 44 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Mar 34.4 °C 42 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Mar 34.0 °C 41 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
11 Mar 34.6 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Mar 34.9 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Mar 33.6 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Mar 35.0 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Mar 33.2 °C 44 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Mar 33.0 °C 44 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Mar 32.8 °C 43 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Mar 32.8 °C 45 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Mar 34.1 °C 35 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Mar 33.0 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Mar 32.9 °C 49 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Mar 32.4 °C 48 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Mar 32.9 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Mar 32.6 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar 33.9 °C 44 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Mar 33.1 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
27 Mar 33.3 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
28 Mar after 32.9 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Mar after 32.7 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Mar after 31.8 °C 46 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Mar after 32.6 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
1 Apr after 32.1 °C 52 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
2 Apr after 34.6 °C 47 % 35 km/h 7.0 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Feb 2017
After · 3 Apr 2017

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 · 181Every 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 Costa Rica ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Carrillo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 February 2017 to 27 March 2017 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 March 2017 to 25 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,618 hectares (46.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santa Cruz (3,422 ha, 2.6 %); Carrillo (1,227 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.0 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 71 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Costa Rica (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: 25 March 2017 → 27 March 2017.
  2. Start date: 4 March 2017 → 28 February 2017.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 March 2017 to 25 March 2017. 181 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.

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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.