How long did the La Primavera fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2019 to 19 January 2019 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2019 to 17 January 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,590 hectares (25.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered La Primavera (2,607 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class 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.

CO · Colombia · 2019-01-15 → 2019-01-19

La Primavera fire, 15 January 2019 La Primavera

Out · last detection 19 Jan 2019, 18:48 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2019 in La Primavera, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,590 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 154th largest in Vichada since 2016 (of 392 with a page). Number 51 in Colombia in 2019, of 131.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: La Primavera · 2016 La Primavera · 2017 La Primavera · 2026 La Primavera · 2020

Burnt area: 2,590ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 15 Jan 2019 – 19 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 15 Jan; 2019
Heat detections: 57; in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Danger at start: 24; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 111MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan19 Jan

Play back 19 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 16 Jan 17 Jan 19 Jan

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

38km/h · peak gust

38%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 641 ha in 2016, 84 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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 Primavera where it started

2,607 ha reached on 15 Jan

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.

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)
15 Jan	33.3 °C	38 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
16 Jan	33.6 °C	41 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
17 Jan	32.9 °C	51 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 21
18 Jan	33.6 °C	49 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 20
19 Jan	33.6 °C	42 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
20 Jan after	33.6 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
21 Jan after	34.3 °C	40 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
22 Jan after	34.4 °C	37 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
23 Jan after	32.8 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
24 Jan after	34.3 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
25 Jan after	34.0 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
26 Jan after	34.0 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
27 Jan after	34.2 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Jan after	34.9 °C	37 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Jan after	35.0 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Jan 2019

After · 26 Jan 2019

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.

Detections table · 57Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the La Primavera fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2019 to 19 January 2019 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 January 2019 to 17 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,590 hectares (25.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered La Primavera (2,607 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 38 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 25, class 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 ›

UNGRD · Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres ↗
IDEAM ↗

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.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 123 · 119.

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 15 January 2019 to 17 January 2019. 57 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.

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.

Where it burned