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Ischilín fire, 20 August 2020 Ischilín, Punilla

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2020, 18:31 UTC

The fire started on 20 August 2020 in Ischilín, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,803 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Córdoba since 2016 (of 95 with a page). Number 11 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ischilín · 2020Punilla · 2024Punilla · 2020Colón · 2017

Burnt area
18,803ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
20 Aug 2020 – 28 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
2
departments
Started on
20 Aug
2020
Heat detections
919
in a single hotspot: 396 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
3.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Aug28 Aug
28 Aug 2020

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 2020 · 725 MW · 25 21 Aug 2020 · 704 MW · 36 22 Aug 2020 · 1,354 MW · 92 23 Aug 2020 · 19,333 MW · 238 24 Aug 2020 · 4,068 MW · 250 25 Aug 2020 · 2,335 MW · 121 26 Aug 2020 · 1,736 MW · 141 27 Aug 2020 · 96 MW · 14 28 Aug 2020 · 6 MW · 2
20 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
51km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 1 Sept.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 43 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (188 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. Ischilín where it started
    15,451 ha reached on 20 Aug
    3.0 %
  2. Punilla
    3,442 ha reached on 23 Aug
    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 area5.9 ha
Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.9 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (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)
20 Aug 8.3 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
21 Aug 13.2 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
22 Aug 15.5 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug 18.5 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
24 Aug 22.2 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Aug 25.5 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm High 21
26 Aug 20.9 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
27 Aug 17.1 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Aug 22.1 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Aug after 14.0 °C 43 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Aug after 12.5 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Aug after 9.1 °C 26 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Sept after 5.6 °C 37 % 45 km/h 2.1 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 13 Aug 2020
After · 4 Sept 2020

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 · 919Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ischilín fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 August 2020 and 28 August 2020: 9 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 18,803 hectares (188.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ischilín (15,451 ha, 3.0 %); Punilla (3,442 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 25.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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 · 100 · 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 911 · 100.

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. 919 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 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.