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El Triunfo fire, March 2017 El Triunfo, Sesori, Lolotique

Out · last detection 25 Mar 2017, 19:59 UTC

The fire started on 17 March 2017 in El Triunfo, El Salvador, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,234 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 10 in El Salvador in 2017, of 17.

The power measured by the satellite is low (17.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Berlin · 2019San Agustin · 2019San Vicente · 2019Santa Clara · 2017

Burnt area
1,234ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
17 Mar 2017 – 25 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
17 Mar
2017
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 18 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
35MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Mar25 Mar
25 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

17 Mar 2017 · 63 MW · 10 20 Mar 2017 · 3 MW · 3 21 Mar 2017 · 22 MW · 4 22 Mar 2017 · 5 MW · 1 23 Mar 2017 · 22 MW · 6 24 Mar 2017 · 90 MW · 18 25 Mar 2017 · 37 MW · 8
17 Mar 20 Mar 21 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 25 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

39°high
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 4 Apr.

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 0.8% of the area of London (12 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. El Triunfo where it started
    716 ha reached on 17 Mar
    16 %
  2. Sesori
    518 ha reached on 17 Mar
    2.7 %
  3. Lolotique
    9 ha
    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 2015
Built-up area0.47 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.47 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
17 Mar 35.7 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Mar 34.9 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Mar 36.9 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Mar 37.9 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Mar 39.0 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Mar 38.0 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Mar 37.5 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Mar 37.6 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Mar 37.2 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Mar after 34.5 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Mar after 34.2 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
28 Mar after 33.6 °C 41 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Mar after 34.3 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Mar after 34.2 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Mar after 36.1 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Apr after 36.6 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Apr after 37.1 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Apr after 37.1 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Apr after 36.9 °C 40 % 38 km/h 1.0 mm High 28

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Mar 2017
After · 1 Apr 2017

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 Triunfo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 March 2017 and 25 March 2017: 9 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 1,234 hectares (12.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: El Triunfo (716 ha, 16 %); Sesori (518 ha, 2.7 %); Lolotique (9 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 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 2015, 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.