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El Transito fire, March 2019 Jucuarán, El Transito

Out · last detection 19 Mar 2019, 18:44 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2019 in El Transito, El Salvador, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,403 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 6 in El Salvador in 2019, of 14.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jucuarán · 2017Jucuarán · 2017San Miguel · 2026Intipuca · 2017

Burnt area
1,403ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
6 Mar 2019 – 19 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Mar
2019
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 44 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
41MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar19 Mar
19 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 2019 · 21 MW · 2 7 Mar 2019 · 56 MW · 10 8 Mar 2019 · 16 MW · 4 9 Mar 2019 · 8 MW · 3 11 Mar 2019 · 240 MW · 9 12 Mar 2019 · 33 MW · 11 13 Mar 2019 · 5 MW · 2 14 Mar 2019 · 1 MW · 1 17 Mar 2019 · 28 MW · 3 18 Mar 2019 · 12 MW · 2 19 Mar 2019 · 29 MW · 3
6 Mar 8 Mar 11 Mar 13 Mar 17 Mar 19 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

36°high
51km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

79% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,111 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.9% of the area of London (14 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. Jucuarán
    903 ha reached on 7 Mar
    3.6 %
  2. El Transito where it started
    509 ha reached on 6 Mar
    6.0 %

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 area0.84 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.84 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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)
6 Mar 35.4 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Mar 35.5 °C 32 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Mar 35.2 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Mar 34.4 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Mar 33.9 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Mar 35.0 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Mar 34.6 °C 38 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Mar 34.0 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Mar 33.1 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Mar 32.3 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Mar 34.8 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Mar 34.6 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
18 Mar 33.7 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Mar 32.6 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Mar after 32.8 °C 40 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Mar after 33.2 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Mar after 32.9 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Mar after 32.6 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Mar after 32.8 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2019
After · 26 Mar 2019

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 · 50Every 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 El Salvador ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the El Transito fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 March 2019 to 19 March 2019 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2019 to 14 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,403 hectares (14.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jucuarán (903 ha, 3.6 %); El Transito (509 ha, 6.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of El Salvador (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 ›

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.

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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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 March 2019 to 14 March 2019. 50 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 (Public Domain). 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.