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La Cruz fire, 26 March 2016 La Cruz

Out · last detection 12 Apr 2016, 18:26 UTC

The fire started on 26 March 2016 in La Cruz, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,985 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 18th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 4 in Costa Rica in 2016, of 22.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Cruz · 2018La Cruz · 2026La Cruz · 2019La Cruz · 2026

Burnt area
2,985ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
26 Mar 2016 – 12 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit
1
cantons
Started on
26 Mar
2016
Heat detections
121
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
96MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Mar12 Apr
12 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

29 Mar 2016 · 25 MW · 3 30 Mar 2016 · 344 MW · 12 31 Mar 2016 · 29 MW · 3 2 Apr 2016 · 114 MW · 5 3 Apr 2016 · 6 MW · 1 5 Apr 2016 · 65 MW · 5 6 Apr 2016 · 40 MW · 5 7 Apr 2016 · 182 MW · 29 8 Apr 2016 · 95 MW · 18 9 Apr 2016 · 54 MW · 10 10 Apr 2016 · 46 MW · 5 11 Apr 2016 · 190 MW · 18 12 Apr 2016 · 66 MW · 7
29 Mar 30 Mar 31 Mar 3 Apr 6 Apr 8 Apr 10 Apr 12 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
75km/h · peak gust
35%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. La Cruz where it started
    3,004 ha reached on 29 Mar
    2.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area2.5 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
26 Mar 32.4 °C 50 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
27 Mar 31.6 °C 48 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Mar 33.1 °C 46 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Mar 32.8 °C 45 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Mar 33.6 °C 38 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
31 Mar 34.4 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Apr 33.2 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 16
2 Apr 34.2 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Apr 33.4 °C 47 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Apr 32.1 °C 49 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Apr 31.2 °C 50 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Apr 30.5 °C 55 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
7 Apr 31.7 °C 49 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Apr 30.7 °C 55 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Apr 31.6 °C 46 % 75 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Apr 31.6 °C 43 % 74 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Apr 32.5 °C 46 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Apr 32.7 °C 45 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Apr after 32.3 °C 51 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Apr after 32.8 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Apr after 32.8 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Apr after 33.6 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Apr after 34.1 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Apr after 31.4 °C 53 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Apr after 33.2 °C 46 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
20 Apr after 32.9 °C 42 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Apr after 32.8 °C 47 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Apr after 33.1 °C 50 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Mar 2016
After · 19 Apr 2016

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 · 121Every 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 Costa Rica ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the La Cruz fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 March 2016 to 12 April 2016 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 March 2016 to 12 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,985 hectares (29.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered La Cruz (3,004 ha, 2.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 35 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Costa Rica (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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 29 March 2016 → 26 March 2016.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 March 2016 to 12 April 2016. 121 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 2015, 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 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). 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.