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Esquías fire, 5 April 2023 Esquías, Minas de Oro, San Luís

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2023, 19:56 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2023 in Esquías, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,787 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in Comayagua since 2016 (of 61 with a page). Number 12 in Honduras in 2023, of 149.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orica · 2020Esquías · 2017Cedros · 2020Cedros · 2020

Burnt area
3,787ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
5 Apr 2023 – 22 Apr 2023
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
5 Apr
2023
Heat detections
142
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr22 Apr
22 Apr 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2023 · 2 MW · 2 6 Apr 2023 · 75 MW · 10 7 Apr 2023 · 40 MW · 13 8 Apr 2023 · 57 MW · 5 9 Apr 2023 · 9 MW · 9 10 Apr 2023 · 222 MW · 30 11 Apr 2023 · 48 MW · 10 12 Apr 2023 · 313 MW · 25 13 Apr 2023 · 4 MW · 4 14 Apr 2023 · 4 MW · 2 15 Apr 2023 · 52 MW · 14 16 Apr 2023 · 71 MW · 13 19 Apr 2023 · 16 MW · 1 21 Apr 2023 · 4 MW · 1 22 Apr 2023 · 6 MW · 3
5 Apr 8 Apr 11 Apr 12 Apr 14 Apr 19 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

70% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,086 ha in 2017, 678 ha in 2019, 1,500 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,632 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Esquías where it started
    2,349 ha reached on 6 Apr
    6.0 %
  2. Minas de Oro
    802 ha reached on 5 Apr
    2.0 %
  3. San Luís
    658 ha reached on 10 Apr
    5.3 %

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 2025
Built-up area9.0 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 9.0 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
5 Apr 34.3 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Apr 33.8 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Apr 34.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Apr 33.5 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 38
9 Apr 30.3 °C 36 % 42 km/h 1.9 mm Moderate 16
10 Apr 33.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Apr 33.7 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Apr 34.7 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Apr 34.1 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Apr 33.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Apr 36.6 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Apr 35.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Apr 32.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.8 mm High 28
18 Apr 33.3 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
19 Apr 35.2 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
20 Apr 35.2 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Apr 36.2 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Apr 37.2 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 38
23 Apr after 35.0 °C 30 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Apr after 35.5 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
25 Apr after 36.7 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.3 mm High 33
26 Apr after 35.9 °C 28 % 25 km/h 0.7 mm High 30

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2023
After · 29 Apr 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 12 April 2023 the air beside the fire reached 84 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak84 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10121 µg/m³
Optical depth1.04
345678910111213141516171819
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 142Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Esquías fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 April 2023 to 22 April 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 April 2023 to 16 April 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,787 hectares (37.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Esquías (2,349 ha, 6.0 %); Minas de Oro (802 ha, 2.0 %); San Luís (658 ha, 5.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 ›

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.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 April 2023 → 22 April 2023.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 5 April 2023 to 16 April 2023. 142 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 2025, 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.