How long did the Igualapa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 April 2021 to 7 May 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 April 2021 to 5 May 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,606 hectares (46.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Igualapa (3,095 ha, 16 %); San Luis Acatlán (1,538 ha, 1.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mexico (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

MX · Mexico · 2021-04-19 → 2021-05-07

Igualapa fire, April 2021 Igualapa, San Luis Acatlán

Out · last detection 7 May 2021, 20:00 UTC

The fire started on 19 April 2021 in Igualapa, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,606 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 114th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 55 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.2 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: Igualapa · 2017 Igualapa · 2024 Azoyú · 2024 Iliatenco · 2024

Burnt area: 4,606ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 19 Apr 2021 – 7 May 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 19 Apr; 2021
Heat detections: 233; in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 49MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Apr7 May

Play back 7 May 2021

How it evolved, day by day

19 Apr 23 Apr 26 Apr 29 Apr 3 May 7 May

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

47km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 8 May.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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

Igualapa where it started

3,095 ha reached on 21 Apr

16 %
San Luis Acatlán

1,538 ha reached on 19 Apr

1.4 %

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)
19 Apr	32.1 °C	26 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Apr	33.2 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
21 Apr	32.6 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Apr	33.2 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
23 Apr	33.2 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Apr	31.9 °C	36 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
25 Apr	31.9 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Apr	32.7 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Apr	33.4 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Apr	31.5 °C	34 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
29 Apr	31.0 °C	35 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
30 Apr	30.9 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 36
1 May	31.7 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.3 mm	High 35
2 May	30.2 °C	39 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
3 May	30.7 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
4 May	31.8 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 May	31.4 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 May	30.7 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
7 May	32.1 °C	36 %	39 km/h	3.2 mm	Moderate 13
8 May after	31.1 °C	44 %	41 km/h	4.7 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Apr 2021

After · 14 May 2021

Before After

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 · 233Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Igualapa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 April 2021 to 7 May 2021 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 April 2021 to 5 May 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,606 hectares (46.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Igualapa (3,095 ha, 16 %); San Luis Acatlán (1,538 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mexico (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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 May 2021 → 7 May 2021.
25 October 2026 Start date: 23 April 2021 → 19 April 2021.

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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What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 April 2021 to 5 May 2021. 233 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (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.

Where it burned