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Guanarito fire, March 2022 Guanarito

Out · last detection 26 Mar 2022, 17:21 UTC

The fire started on 15 March 2022 in Guanarito, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,838 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Portuguesa since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 143 in Venezuela in 2022, of 205.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guanarito · 2020Arismendi · 2020Guanarito · 2020Guanarito · 2019

Burnt area
1,838ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
15 Mar 2022 – 26 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Mar
2022
Heat detections
46
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
49MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Mar26 Mar
26 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

15 Mar 2022 · 134 MW · 3 16 Mar 2022 · 20 MW · 7 17 Mar 2022 · 23 MW · 4 18 Mar 2022 · 84 MW · 14 19 Mar 2022 · 82 MW · 6 20 Mar 2022 · 38 MW · 5 21 Mar 2022 · 15 MW · 3 23 Mar 2022 · 43 MW · 3 26 Mar 2022 · 3 MW · 1
15 Mar 17 Mar 19 Mar 21 Mar 26 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 330 ha in 2018, 1,399 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,608 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (18 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. Guanarito 38,232 inhabitants where it started
    1,850 ha reached on 15 Mar
    0.5 %

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)
15 Mar 35.4 °C 37 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
16 Mar 35.4 °C 40 % 45 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 16
17 Mar 36.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
18 Mar 35.3 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Mar 36.9 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Mar 36.1 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
21 Mar 36.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
22 Mar 36.3 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Mar 37.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Mar 36.6 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Mar 36.7 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Mar 38.4 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Mar after 37.2 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Mar after 36.2 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
29 Mar after 37.3 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Mar after 37.9 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Mar after 36.0 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Apr after 37.8 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Apr after 37.6 °C 30 % 38 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 · 8 Mar 2022
After · 2 Apr 2022

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 · 46Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Guanarito fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 March 2022 to 26 March 2022 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 March 2022 to 23 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,838 hectares (18.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Guanarito (1,850 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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: 23 March 2022 → 26 March 2022.

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 15 March 2022 to 23 March 2022. 46 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 (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.