How long did the Concepcion fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2019 and 16 September 2019: 10 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 5,387 hectares (53.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concepcion (4,928 ha, 0.7 %); San Carlos (473 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

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

PY · Paraguay · 2019-09-07 → 2019-09-16

Concepcion fire, 7 September 2019 Concepcion, San Carlos

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2019, 16:59 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Concepcion, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,387 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 26th largest in Concepción since 2016 (of 195 with a page). Number 27 in Paraguay in 2019, of 231.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Concepcion · 2017 Concepcion · 2017 Concepcion · 2016 Concepcion · 2021

Burnt area: 5,387ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 7 Sept 2019 – 16 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 7 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 150; in a single hotspot: 145 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 272MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept16 Sept

Play back 16 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

75km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.9 mm on 18 Sept.

This area had burned before

76% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 378 ha in 2016, 3,598 ha in 2017, 594 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,080 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

Concepcion where it started

4,928 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.7 %
San Carlos

473 ha reached on 10 Sept

0.2 %

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)
7 Sept	36.7 °C	28 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
8 Sept	36.7 °C	31 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
9 Sept	37.7 °C	24 %	75 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
10 Sept	37.0 °C	25 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Sept	30.8 °C	48 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Sept	21.8 °C	69 %	42 km/h	7.1 mm	Very low 1
13 Sept	26.1 °C	52 %	29 km/h	0.1 mm	Very low 5
14 Sept	34.1 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
15 Sept	37.8 °C	25 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Sept	38.4 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Sept after	27.8 °C	47 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
18 Sept after	25.8 °C	51 %	35 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Aug 2019

After · 23 Sept 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 · 150Every 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 Paraguay ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Concepcion fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2019 and 16 September 2019: 10 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 5,387 hectares (53.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concepcion (4,928 ha, 0.7 %); San Carlos (473 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (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: 132 · 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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

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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 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 132 · 911.

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. 150 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 (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.

Where it burned