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PE · Peru · –

Coronel Portillo fire, 11 September 2024 Coronel Portillo

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2024, 18:13 UTC

The fire started on 11 September 2024 in Coronel Portillo, Peru, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,443 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Ucayali since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 12 in Peru in 2024, of 71.

Burnt area
2,443ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
11 Sept 2024 – 20 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
11 Sept
2024
Heat detections
80
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
113MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Sept20 Sept
20 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2024 · 228 MW · 17 13 Sept 2024 · 288 MW · 27 14 Sept 2024 · 71 MW · 12 15 Sept 2024 · 126 MW · 14 18 Sept 2024 · 22 MW · 1 19 Sept 2024 · 28 MW · 5 20 Sept 2024 · 31 MW · 4
13 Sept 18 Sept 20 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

39°high
32km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 21 Sept.

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 1.5% of the area of London (24 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. Coronel Portillo 135,161 inhabitants where it started
    2,454 ha reached on 12 Sept
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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

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)
11 Sept 37.7 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Sept 37.7 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
13 Sept 37.9 °C 35 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
14 Sept 39.1 °C 35 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
15 Sept 36.7 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
16 Sept 32.1 °C 56 % 26 km/h 5.2 mm Very low 4
17 Sept 35.9 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
18 Sept 37.1 °C 39 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
19 Sept 38.1 °C 36 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Sept 38.7 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Sept after 35.2 °C 42 % 32 km/h 1.0 mm High 26

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 25.8, a minimum humidity of 33% and 4 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 10.

FWI at the start 25.8
Minimum humidity 33 %
Days without rain 4
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Padre Abad fire, September 2019
1,385 ha 4 days FWI 19.0 Min. humidity 34 % 108 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 13.7 mm on 20 Sept.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 10. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

1.0 mmfirst rain
21 Septthe day after it ended
32km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 20 Sept, and on 21 Sept 1.0 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Sept 2024
After · 27 Sept 2024

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 · Copernicus

On 22 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 254 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 148: 9.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak254 µg/m³
Days over the guideline21 days
PM10363 µg/m³
Optical depth4.39
3 Sept8 Sept13 Sept18 Sept23 Sept
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 80Every 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 Peru

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Coronel Portillo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 September 2024 to 20 September 2024 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2024 to 15 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,443 hectares (24.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Coronel Portillo (2,454 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Peru (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: 116 · 105 · Emergency number and official warnings

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 15 September 2024 → 20 September 2024.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 116 · 105.

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 11 September 2024 to 15 September 2024. 80 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.
  • 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.

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 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.