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Liberia fire, March 2018 Liberia

Out · last detection 6 Apr 2018, 07:43 UTC

The fire started on 21 March 2018 in Liberia, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,529 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). The largest in Costa Rica in 2018, of 11.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.7 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: Liberia · 2016Carrillo · 2022Carrillo · 2020Carrillo · 2026

Burnt area
3,529ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
21 Mar 2018 – 6 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
1
cantons
Started on
21 Mar
2018
Heat detections
197
in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
59MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Mar6 Apr
6 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

21 Mar 2018 · 69 MW · 13 22 Mar 2018 · 14 MW · 6 23 Mar 2018 · 212 MW · 27 24 Mar 2018 · 59 MW · 14 25 Mar 2018 · 87 MW · 11 26 Mar 2018 · 40 MW · 8 27 Mar 2018 · 21 MW · 7 28 Mar 2018 · 19 MW · 9 29 Mar 2018 · 16 MW · 7 30 Mar 2018 · 268 MW · 37 31 Mar 2018 · 23 MW · 4 1 Apr 2018 · 60 MW · 9 2 Apr 2018 · 56 MW · 16 3 Apr 2018 · 19 MW · 6 4 Apr 2018 · 22 MW · 10 5 Apr 2018 · 13 MW · 6 6 Apr 2018 · 7 MW · 7
21 Mar 24 Mar 27 Mar 30 Mar 2 Apr 5 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
68km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.7 mm on 7 Apr.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 983 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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. Liberia where it started
    3,549 ha reached on 21 Mar
    2.4 %

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 area0.33 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.33 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
21 Mar 33.2 °C 39 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Mar 32.2 °C 39 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Mar 32.4 °C 40 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Mar 31.5 °C 48 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Mar 32.9 °C 42 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
26 Mar 32.7 °C 45 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Mar 32.5 °C 39 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Mar 33.2 °C 41 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Mar 33.9 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Mar 32.7 °C 45 % 48 km/h 0.1 mm High 35
31 Mar 32.5 °C 38 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Apr 33.6 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Apr 35.2 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Apr 35.4 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
4 Apr 35.0 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Apr 34.7 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Apr 34.1 °C 37 % 31 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 15
7 Apr after 32.0 °C 54 % 28 km/h 15.7 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Mar 2018
After · 13 Apr 2018

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 · 197Every 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 Liberia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 March 2018 and 6 April 2018: 17 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 3,529 hectares (35.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Liberia (3,549 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very 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 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 911.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 197 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 (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.