Cintalapa fire, 2 May 2024 Cintalapa
The fire started on 2 May 2024 in Cintalapa, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,671 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 6 May 2024 and declared extinguished on 15 May 2024.
It is the 44th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 81 in Mexico in 2024, of 289.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,671ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 2 May 2024 – 12 May 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 2 May
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 202
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 115MW
- 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.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,640 ha in 2016, 683 ha in 2017, 2,862 ha in 2019, 1,750 ha in 2021, 218 ha in 2022, 1,152 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,623 ha that had burned before.
- 2,322 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2016 3,990 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,683 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2019 3,252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,509 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2021 2,146 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,152 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2023 3,504 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,101 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2019 3,424 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 673 ha Cintalapa fire, April 2017 3,294 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 218 ha Cintalapa fire, May 2022 3,902 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 33 ha Cintalapa fire, May 2019 3,349 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
-
Cintalapa where it started3,693 ha1.5 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 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
Official record
According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 6 May 2024 and burned 3,698 ha (the satellite measured 3,671 ha).
- Cintalapa 4 de agosto / Gongi 6 May 2024 3,698 ha · extinguished on 15 May 2024 · cause: negligence
CONAFOR (Comisión Nacional Forestal), estadística de incendios forestales en datos.gob.mx (CC BY 4.0). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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 12 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 42 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 28: 1.8 times the WHO daily 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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Cintalapa fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 May 2024 and 12 May 2024: 11 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 6 May 2024 and declared extinguished on 15 May 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,671 hectares (36.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Cintalapa (3,693 ha, 1.5 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mexico (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.
- Last day with fire: 18 May 2024 → 12 May 2024.
- Start date: 26 April 2024 → 2 May 2024.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with CONAFOR: 3,698 official ha against 3,671 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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.
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.