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Hualqui fire, 3 February 2023 Hualqui, Chiguayante, Concepción

Out · last detection 12 Feb 2023, 19:34 UTC

The fire started on 3 February 2023 in Hualqui, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,416 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 18th largest in Región del Bío-Bío since 2016 (of 74 with a page). Number 28 in Chile in 2023, of 70.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Hualqui · 2017Hualqui · 2023Concepción · 2026Hualqui · 2017

Burnt area
4,416ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
3 Feb 2023 – 12 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
3
communes
Started on
3 Feb
2023
Heat detections
349
in a single hotspot: 322 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
702MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Feb12 Feb
12 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Feb 2023 · 1,912 MW · 15 4 Feb 2023 · 104 MW · 21 6 Feb 2023 · 47 MW · 6 7 Feb 2023 · 34 MW · 10 8 Feb 2023 · 1,521 MW · 144 9 Feb 2023 · 343 MW · 60 10 Feb 2023 · 1,636 MW · 21 11 Feb 2023 · 545 MW · 53 12 Feb 2023 · 179 MW · 19
3 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb

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
47km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,210 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (44 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. Hualqui where it started
    3,808 ha reached on 3 Feb
    7.0 %
  2. Chiguayante
    604 ha reached on 10 Feb
    8.1 %
  3. Concepción
    6 ha
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area8.3 ha
Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.3 hectares of built-up land and about 550 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)
3 Feb 37.8 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Feb 20.4 °C 62 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
5 Feb 24.3 °C 61 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
6 Feb 27.8 °C 40 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Feb 29.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
8 Feb 26.2 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
9 Feb 27.9 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Feb 26.0 °C 47 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
11 Feb 26.5 °C 36 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Feb 20.6 °C 60 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
13 Feb after 22.6 °C 39 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Feb after 23.5 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
15 Feb after 24.9 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
16 Feb after 23.8 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Feb after 26.1 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Feb after 25.7 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
19 Feb after 26.1 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 Feb after 25.7 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Feb after 26.5 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Feb after 27.7 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jan 2023
After · 19 Feb 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 3 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 1,777 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 506: 34 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak1,777 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM102,541 µg/m³
Optical depth6.27
123456789101112131415
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 · 349Every 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 Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Hualqui fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 February 2023 and 12 February 2023: 10 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 4,416 hectares (44.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Hualqui (3,808 ha, 7.0 %); Chiguayante (604 ha, 8.1 %); Concepción (6 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 47 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 Chile (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: 130 (CONAF) · 132 · 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.

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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

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. 349 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.