Esmeralda fire, December 2022 Esmeralda
The fire started on 30 December 2022 in Esmeralda, Cuba, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,170 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 47th largest in Camagüey since 2016 (of 63 with a page). Number 9 in Cuba in 2022, of 11.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,170ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 30 Dec 2022 – 4 Jan 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Dec
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 44 MW
- Danger at start
- 11
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.4 mm on 6 Jan.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 876 ha in 2019, 403 ha in 2020, 38 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 966 ha that had burned before.
- 876 ha Esmeralda fire, February 2019 1,233 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 311 ha Esmeralda fire, April 2020 1,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Esmeralda fire, April 2020 2,203 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Esmeralda where it started1,176 ha reached on 30 Dec0.6 %
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 2020Inside 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 Dec | 29.9 °C | 57 % | 37 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 11 |
| 31 Dec | 30.1 °C | 56 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 1 Jan | 29.7 °C | 62 % | 35 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 2 Jan | 29.6 °C | 59 % | 44 km/h | 0.3 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 3 Jan | 30.5 °C | 53 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Jan | 30.8 °C | 45 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 5 Jan after | 30.6 °C | 54 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 6 Jan after | 28.0 °C | 67 % | 39 km/h | 2.4 mm | Very low 4 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 2 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 12 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 34Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 2,203 haEsmeralda5 April 2020 · 16 days · 4 km away
- 4,592 haEsmeraldaApril 2021 · 4 days · 24 km away
- 2,155 haEsmeralda20 February 2019 · 13 days · 24 km away
- 2,748 haEsmeraldaMarch 2022 · 5 days · 26 km away
- 2,945 haFlorida7 February 2020 · 7 days · 33 km away
- 2,602 haCamagüeyFebruary 2020 · 6 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Esmeralda fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 December 2022 to 4 January 2023 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 December 2022 to 1 January 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,170 hectares (11.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Esmeralda (1,176 ha, 0.6 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 30.1 °C, humidity dropped to 56 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 12, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Cuba (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: 105 · Emergency number and official warnings ›
Satellite cross-check
History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 1 January 2023 → 4 January 2023.
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
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 30 December 2022 to 1 January 2023. 34 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.
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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.