How long did the Distrito Central fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2019 to 31 March 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 March 2019 to 25 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,909 hectares (39.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Distrito Central (3,578 ha, 2.4 %); Lepaterique (353 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

HN · Honduras · 2019-03-09 → 2019-03-31

Distrito Central fire, 9 March 2019 Distrito Central, Lepaterique

Out · last detection 31 Mar 2019, 07:11 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2019 in Distrito Central, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,909 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 20th largest in Francisco Morazán since 2016 (of 177 with a page). Number 7 in Honduras in 2019, of 93.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Distrito Central · 2017 Distrito Central · 2020 Aguanqueterique · 2019 Cedros · 2020

Burnt area: 3,909ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 9 Mar 2019 – 31 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 9 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 209; in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 207MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar31 Mar

Play back 31 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 16 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 25 Mar 30 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

30°high

68km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 8 Apr.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 801 ha in 2017.

801 ha Distrito Central fire, March 2017 1,242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.5% of the area of London (39 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

Distrito Central 1,126,534 inhabitants where it started

3,578 ha reached on 13 Mar

2.4 %
Lepaterique

353 ha reached on 21 Mar

0.6 %

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 2020

Built-up area8.2 ha

Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.2 hectares of built-up land and about 700 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
9 Mar	27.3 °C	34 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Mar	28.2 °C	33 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Mar	26.6 °C	42 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
12 Mar	26.6 °C	39 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 Mar	28.2 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Mar	29.2 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
15 Mar	29.2 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Mar	28.4 °C	28 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Mar	28.5 °C	32 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Mar	28.9 °C	23 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Mar	27.9 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Mar	28.9 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Mar	27.8 °C	32 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
22 Mar	27.4 °C	31 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Mar	28.2 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Mar	28.0 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Mar	28.9 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
26 Mar	28.6 °C	27 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Mar	27.4 °C	28 %	68 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
28 Mar	27.4 °C	29 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Mar	28.7 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Mar	29.5 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
31 Mar	30.2 °C	28 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
1 Apr after	30.1 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Apr after	30.1 °C	29 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Apr after	28.3 °C	35 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
4 Apr after	28.7 °C	34 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
5 Apr after	27.6 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
6 Apr after	29.9 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Apr after	28.7 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
8 Apr after	28.3 °C	36 %	30 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Mar 2019

After · 7 Apr 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 · 209Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Distrito Central fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 March 2019 to 31 March 2019 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 March 2019 to 25 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,909 hectares (39.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Distrito Central (3,578 ha, 2.4 %); Lepaterique (353 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 30.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Honduras (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: 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

ICF · Instituto de Conservación Forestal ↗
COPECO ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 25 March 2019 → 31 March 2019.
25 October 2026 Start date: 13 March 2019 → 9 March 2019.

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 911.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 March 2019 to 25 March 2019. 209 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 2020, 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 4.0 International (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