How long did the El Paso fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2019 to 13 February 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2019 to 13 February 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,190 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Agustín Codazzi (1,033 ha, 0.6 %); El Paso (722 ha, 0.9 %); La Paz (445 ha, 0.4 %); Becerrill (4 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

CO · Colombia · 2019-02-04 → 2019-02-13

El Paso fire, 4 February 2019 Agustín Codazzi, El Paso, La Paz

Out · last detection 13 Feb 2019, 17:40 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2019 in El Paso, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,190 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 32th largest in Cesar since 2016 (of 60 with a page). Number 74 in Colombia in 2019, of 131.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Paz · 2019 La Jagua De Ibirico · 2021 Becerrill · 2019

Burnt area: 2,190ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 4 Feb 2019 – 13 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit: 4; municipalities
Started on: 4 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 101; in a single hotspot: 127 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 174MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb13 Feb

Play back 13 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 8 Feb 9 Feb 10 Feb 12 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

39°high

27km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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

Agustín Codazzi

1,033 ha reached on 9 Feb

0.6 %
El Paso where it started

722 ha reached on 6 Feb

0.9 %
La Paz

445 ha reached on 9 Feb

0.4 %
Becerrill

4 ha

0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
30 Jan	35.8 °C	36 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
31 Jan	36.0 °C	32 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Feb	37.5 °C	32 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Feb	36.4 °C	32 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Feb	37.0 °C	29 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Feb	37.0 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Feb	37.2 °C	32 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Feb	37.1 °C	32 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Feb	36.8 °C	34 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Feb	36.0 °C	34 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Feb	36.5 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Feb	37.2 °C	27 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Feb	38.5 °C	26 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Feb	38.9 °C	27 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Feb	38.0 °C	30 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 Feb after	37.6 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
15 Feb after	37.5 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	High 34
16 Feb after	37.4 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
17 Feb after	38.5 °C	31 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Feb after	37.4 °C	33 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Feb after	37.5 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Feb after	36.2 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
21 Feb after	38.8 °C	28 %	21 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
22 Feb after	38.4 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
23 Feb after	38.1 °C	30 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2019

After · 20 Feb 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 · 101Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the El Paso fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2019 to 13 February 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2019 to 13 February 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,190 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Agustín Codazzi (1,033 ha, 0.6 %); El Paso (722 ha, 0.9 %); La Paz (445 ha, 0.4 %); Becerrill (4 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

UNGRD · Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres ↗
IDEAM ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 6 February 2019 → 4 February 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 123 · 119.

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 6 February 2019 to 13 February 2019. 101 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