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La Macarena fire, 22 January 2022 La Macarena

Out · last detection 4 Feb 2022, 17:57 UTC

The fire started on 22 January 2022 in La Macarena, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,776 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 3th largest in Meta since 2016 (of 257 with a page). The largest in Colombia in 2022, of 159.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Macarena · 2021La Macarena · 2020La Macarena · 2024La Macarena · 2022

Burnt area
20,776ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
22 Jan 2022 – 4 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
22 Jan
2022
Heat detections
1,352
in a single hotspot: 251 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.5GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jan4 Feb
4 Feb 2022

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jan 2022 · 190 MW · 16 23 Jan 2022 · 110 MW · 23 24 Jan 2022 · 143 MW · 15 25 Jan 2022 · 214 MW · 27 27 Jan 2022 · 2,326 MW · 70 28 Jan 2022 · 2,350 MW · 161 29 Jan 2022 · 2,267 MW · 168 30 Jan 2022 · 1,729 MW · 129 31 Jan 2022 · 3,625 MW · 220 1 Feb 2022 · 3,389 MW · 261 2 Feb 2022 · 2,749 MW · 223 3 Feb 2022 · 181 MW · 26 4 Feb 2022 · 125 MW · 13
22 Jan 24 Jan 27 Jan 29 Jan 31 Jan 2 Feb 4 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
57km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 5 Feb.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,051 ha in 2019, 1,677 ha in 2020, 2,577 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (208 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 Macarena 36,781 inhabitants where it started
    20,920 ha reached on 22 Jan
    1.9 %

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 area0.44 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.44 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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)
22 Jan 33.2 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
23 Jan 31.8 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
24 Jan 32.7 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Jan 33.1 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Jan 30.9 °C 52 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Jan 33.9 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jan 34.2 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jan 35.5 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jan 33.9 °C 36 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Jan 33.5 °C 36 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Feb 33.7 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Feb 34.8 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Feb 33.2 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Feb 31.4 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
5 Feb after 32.1 °C 49 % 33 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jan 2022
After · 11 Feb 2022

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 · 1,352Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the La Macarena fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 January 2022 to 4 February 2022 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 January 2022 to 4 February 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,776 hectares (207.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered La Macarena (20,920 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119 · 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 123 · 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 23 January 2022 to 4 February 2022. 1,352 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 International (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.