How long did the Colón fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 April 2021 and 17 April 2021: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,332 hectares (13.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Colón (1,191 ha, 1.9 %); Los Arabos (147 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

CU · Cuba · 2021-04-13 → 2021-04-17

Colón fire, April 2021 Colón, Los Arabos

Out · last detection 17 Apr 2021, 17:56 UTC

The fire started on 13 April 2021 in Colón, Cuba, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,332 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in Matanzas since 2016 (of 34 with a page). Number 18 in Cuba in 2021, of 38.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Colón · 2020 Los Arabos · 2017 Los Arabos · 2023 Santo Domingo · 2024

Burnt area: 1,332ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 13 Apr 2021 – 17 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 13 Apr; 2021
Heat detections: 33; in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 69MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Apr17 Apr

Play back 17 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

13 Apr 14 Apr 15 Apr 16 Apr 17 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

47km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 548 ha in 2020.

548 ha Colón fire, February 2020 1,331 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.8% of the area of London (13 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

Colón where it started

1,191 ha reached on 10 Apr

1.9 %
Los Arabos

147 ha reached on 15 Apr

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
13 Apr	31.0 °C	35 %	47 km/h	1.6 mm	High 24
14 Apr	31.4 °C	34 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Apr	31.9 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Apr	33.7 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Apr	33.8 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Apr after	34.2 °C	43 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
19 Apr after	34.7 °C	39 %	52 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 38
20 Apr after	34.0 °C	40 %	46 km/h	0.1 mm	High 37
21 Apr after	34.5 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
22 Apr after	32.2 °C	41 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	High 32
23 Apr after	33.1 °C	43 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
24 Apr after	34.6 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
25 Apr after	34.1 °C	37 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
26 Apr after	33.7 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Apr after	31.7 °C	48 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Apr 2021

After · 24 Apr 2021

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 · 33Every 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 Cuba ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Colón fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 April 2021 and 17 April 2021: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,332 hectares (13.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Colón (1,191 ha, 1.9 %); Los Arabos (147 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cuba (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: 105

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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 105.

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. 33 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 (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.

Where it burned