Skip to content
worldfires
en
MX · Mexico · →

Ocozocoautla de Espinosa fire, April 2019 Jiquipilas, Villaflores, Ocozocoautla de Espinosa

Out · last detection 30 Apr 2019, 18:58 UTC

The fire started on 5 April 2019 in Ocozocoautla de Espinosa, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,596 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 10 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jiquipilas · 2016Jiquipilas · 2018Jiquipilas · 2016Jiquipilas · 2018

Burnt area
18,596ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
5 Apr 2019 – 29 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
5 Apr
2019
Heat detections
955
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
21
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
368MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Apr29 Apr
30 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

5 Apr 2019 · 46 MW · 7 6 Apr 2019 · 220 MW · 18 7 Apr 2019 · 228 MW · 33 8 Apr 2019 · 233 MW · 41 10 Apr 2019 · 50 MW · 10 11 Apr 2019 · 537 MW · 36 12 Apr 2019 · 1,127 MW · 57 13 Apr 2019 · 1,403 MW · 88 14 Apr 2019 · 246 MW · 45 15 Apr 2019 · 128 MW · 8 16 Apr 2019 · 140 MW · 11 17 Apr 2019 · 317 MW · 46 18 Apr 2019 · 741 MW · 89 19 Apr 2019 · 106 MW · 27 20 Apr 2019 · 516 MW · 70 21 Apr 2019 · 418 MW · 64 22 Apr 2019 · 1,366 MW · 84 23 Apr 2019 · 384 MW · 41 24 Apr 2019 · 494 MW · 68 25 Apr 2019 · 154 MW · 44 26 Apr 2019 · 129 MW · 22 27 Apr 2019 · 45 MW · 7 28 Apr 2019 · 59 MW · 8 29 Apr 2019 · 78 MW · 21 30 Apr 2019 · 29 MW · 10
5 Apr 10 Apr 13 Apr 14 Apr 18 Apr 22 Apr 26 Apr 30 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

34°high
86km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 2 May.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,405 ha in 2016, 3,440 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,308 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (186 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. Jiquipilas
    17,080 ha
    13 %
  2. Villaflores
    1,384 ha
    0.7 %
  3. Ocozocoautla de Espinosa where it started
    231 ha
    0.1 %

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 area15 ha
Residents≈ 1,100

Inside the perimeter there were about 15 hectares of built-up land and about 1,100 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)
5 Apr 31.2 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
6 Apr 30.5 °C 50 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
7 Apr 31.5 °C 47 % 53 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
8 Apr 31.5 °C 47 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
9 Apr 28.1 °C 62 % 55 km/h 0.1 mm High 23
10 Apr 33.2 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Apr 32.1 °C 37 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Apr 31.3 °C 29 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Apr 30.6 °C 34 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Apr 31.6 °C 40 % 68 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
15 Apr 26.6 °C 62 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
16 Apr 31.1 °C 48 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
17 Apr 31.1 °C 50 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 24
18 Apr 30.9 °C 50 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Apr 25.8 °C 50 % 86 km/h 0.7 mm High 32
20 Apr 27.8 °C 47 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Apr 33.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Apr 32.7 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Apr 33.1 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Apr 32.6 °C 44 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Apr 30.7 °C 52 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Apr 28.3 °C 61 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Apr 28.0 °C 65 % 43 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 20
28 Apr 33.0 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Apr 34.1 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
30 Apr after 32.8 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 May after 30.8 °C 48 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
2 May after 30.7 °C 60 % 38 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Mar 2019
After · 6 May 2019

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 · 0Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ocozocoautla de Espinosa fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 April 2019 and 29 April 2019: 25 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 18,596 hectares (186.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Jiquipilas (17,080 ha, 13 %); Villaflores (1,384 ha, 0.7 %); Ocozocoautla de Espinosa (231 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.1 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 86 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 6 May 2019 → 29 April 2019.
  2. Start date: 31 March 2019 → 5 April 2019.

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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.