How long did the Colbún fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2019 to 23 March 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 March 2019 to 18 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,496 hectares (15.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Colbún (1,494 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

CL · Chile · 2019-03-09 → 2019-03-23

Colbún fire, March 2019 Colbún

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2019, 04:53 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2019 in Colbún, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,496 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Región del Maule since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 22 in Chile in 2019, of 44.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Linares · 2026 Linares · 2017

Burnt area: 1,496ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 9 Mar 2019 – 23 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; communes
Started on: 9 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 133; in a single hotspot: 94 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 141MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar23 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar 15 Mar 17 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 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

24°high

65km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (15 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

Colbún where it started

1,494 ha reached on 9 Mar

0.5 %

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.

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)
9 Mar	23.5 °C	31 %	65 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
10 Mar	20.3 °C	47 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
11 Mar	19.2 °C	55 %	41 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 2
12 Mar	23.7 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 5
13 Mar	22.0 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
14 Mar	21.9 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
15 Mar	20.3 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
16 Mar	17.8 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
17 Mar	20.8 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
18 Mar	18.7 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
19 Mar	17.4 °C	14 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
20 Mar	20.8 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
21 Mar	21.0 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
22 Mar	23.6 °C	20 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
23 Mar	22.7 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
24 Mar after	22.9 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Mar after	21.4 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
26 Mar after	25.1 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Mar after	20.3 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
28 Mar after	19.7 °C	50 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Mar 2019

After · 30 Mar 2019

Before After

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 · 133Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Colbún fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2019 to 23 March 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 March 2019 to 18 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,496 hectares (15.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Colbún (1,494 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 23.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 65 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (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: 130 (CONAF) · 132 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

CONAF · Corporación Nacional Forestal ↗
SENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

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 9 March 2019 to 18 March 2019. 133 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 ADM3 (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.

Where it burned