Skip to content
worldfires
en
CL · Chile · →

Curepto fire, February 2023 Sagrada Familia, Curepto, Pencahue

Out · last detection 15 Feb 2023, 06:17 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2023 in Curepto, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,995 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Región del Maule since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 18 in Chile in 2023, of 70.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pencahue · 2024Curepto · 2017Vichuquén · 2017Curepto · 2016

Burnt area
6,995ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
4 Feb 2023 – 15 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
4 Feb
2023
Heat detections
422
in a single hotspot: 363 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
657MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb15 Feb
15 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

4 Feb 2023 · 1,947 MW · 69 5 Feb 2023 · 623 MW · 49 6 Feb 2023 · 252 MW · 45 7 Feb 2023 · 320 MW · 28 9 Feb 2023 · 84 MW · 4 10 Feb 2023 · 1,610 MW · 64 11 Feb 2023 · 1,284 MW · 71 12 Feb 2023 · 789 MW · 42 13 Feb 2023 · 287 MW · 43 14 Feb 2023 · 29 MW · 3 15 Feb 2023 · 7 MW · 4
4 Feb 6 Feb 9 Feb 11 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb

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
44km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Sagrada Familia
    2,570 ha reached on 4 Feb
    4.7 %
  2. Curepto where it started
    2,316 ha reached on 4 Feb
    2.2 %
  3. Pencahue
    2,121 ha reached on 4 Feb
    2.2 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025
Built-up area2.9 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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)
4 Feb 29.1 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
5 Feb 28.8 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Feb 31.6 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
7 Feb 32.7 °C 28 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Feb 32.1 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
9 Feb 33.8 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Feb 33.4 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Feb 33.1 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Feb 29.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Feb 29.6 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Feb 29.5 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Feb 30.8 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Feb after 27.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Feb after 29.7 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Feb after 29.9 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Feb after 31.4 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Feb after 32.2 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Feb after 32.2 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Feb after 30.3 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Feb after 32.3 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Feb after 29.5 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Feb after 29.0 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Jan 2023
After · 22 Feb 2023

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 6 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 229 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 153: 10 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak229 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10328 µg/m³
Optical depth3.31
23456789101112131415161718
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 · 422Every 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 Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Curepto fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 February 2023 and 15 February 2023: 12 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 6,995 hectares (70.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Sagrada Familia (2,570 ha, 4.7 %); Curepto (2,316 ha, 2.2 %); Pencahue (2,121 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.8 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 422 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 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.