How long did the La Concordia fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 April 2024 to 30 April 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 April 2024 to 24 April 2024. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 18 April 2024 and declared extinguished on 23 April 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,767 hectares (47.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered La Concordia (4,792 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 · 2024-04-18 → 2024-04-30

La Concordia fire, April 2024 La Concordia

Out · last detection 30 Apr 2024, 19:42 UTC

The fire started on 18 April 2024 in La Concordia, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,767 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 18 April 2024 and declared extinguished on 23 April 2024.

It is the 25th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 52 in Mexico in 2024, of 289.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Concordia · 2020 La Concordia · 2024 La Concordia · 2024 La Concordia · 2020

Burnt area: 4,767ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 18 Apr 2024 – 30 Apr 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 18 Apr; 2024
Heat detections: 232; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 32; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 124MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Apr30 Apr

Play back 30 Apr 2024

How it evolved, day by day

18 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr 22 Apr 27 Apr 29 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

35°high

40km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 1 May.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,360 ha in 2020.

1,360 ha La Concordia fire, April 2020 1,566 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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

La Concordia where it started

4,792 ha reached on 18 Apr

1.8 %

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 area0.73 ha

Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.73 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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

Official record

According to CONAFOR, this fire started on 18 April 2024 and burned 4,073 ha (the satellite measured 4,767 ha).

La Concordia Ejido Dolores Jaltenango/ Chipilinar 18 April 2024 4,073 ha · extinguished on 23 April 2024 · cause: unknown

CONAFOR (Comisión Nacional Forestal), estadística de incendios forestales en datos.gob.mx (CC BY 4.0). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.

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)
18 Apr	35.3 °C	34 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Apr	34.7 °C	34 %	28 km/h	2.9 mm	Moderate 12
20 Apr	32.0 °C	53 %	30 km/h	1.4 mm	Low 10
21 Apr	32.4 °C	50 %	27 km/h	5.2 mm	Very low 4
22 Apr	32.4 °C	48 %	36 km/h	3.6 mm	Very low 4
23 Apr	33.3 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 12
24 Apr	35.1 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Apr	33.8 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Apr	32.9 °C	39 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
27 Apr	33.1 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
28 Apr	33.7 °C	42 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
29 Apr	33.1 °C	43 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 17
30 Apr	32.7 °C	51 %	27 km/h	7.7 mm	Very low 3
1 May after	32.6 °C	53 %	24 km/h	4.1 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Apr 2024

After · 7 May 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 April 2024 the air beside the fire reached 64 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak64 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1093 µg/m³

Optical depth1.65

WHO 15

161718192021222324252627

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 · 232Every 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 La Concordia fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 April 2024 to 30 April 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 April 2024 to 24 April 2024. According to CONAFOR, it was detected on 18 April 2024 and declared extinguished on 23 April 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,767 hectares (47.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered La Concordia (4,792 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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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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 18 April 2024 to 24 April 2024. 232 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with CONAFOR: 4,073 official ha against 4,767 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
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 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