Skip to content
worldfires
en
CR · Costa Rica · →

Liberia fire, April 2018 Liberia

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2018, 18:50 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2018 in Liberia, Costa Rica, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,515 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 53th largest in Provincia Guanacaste since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 7 in Costa Rica in 2018, of 11.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Liberia · 2017Liberia · 2016Carrillo · 2020Carrillo · 2022

Burnt area
1,515ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
11 Apr 2018 – 22 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
1
cantons
Started on
11 Apr
2018
Heat detections
71
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
15
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
96MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr22 Apr
22 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 2018 · 182 MW · 13 13 Apr 2018 · 287 MW · 26 14 Apr 2018 · 164 MW · 10 15 Apr 2018 · 107 MW · 8 16 Apr 2018 · 32 MW · 3 18 Apr 2018 · 12 MW · 4 20 Apr 2018 · 43 MW · 5 21 Apr 2018 · 21 MW · 1 22 Apr 2018 · 18 MW · 1
12 Apr 13 Apr 14 Apr 16 Apr 20 Apr 22 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
63km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 24 Apr.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 827 ha in 2016, 1,293 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,346 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (15 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
    1,525 ha reached on 12 Apr
    1.0 %

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 area0.45 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.45 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
11 Apr 32.1 °C 44 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
12 Apr 33.4 °C 45 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Apr 33.7 °C 43 % 45 km/h 9.2 mm Very low 3
14 Apr 33.3 °C 50 % 35 km/h 3.5 mm Very low 3
15 Apr 34.2 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm Low 10
16 Apr 32.5 °C 47 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Apr 31.8 °C 51 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Apr 32.7 °C 45 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Apr 32.2 °C 50 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Apr 32.6 °C 52 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Apr 33.8 °C 49 % 62 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
22 Apr 33.8 °C 50 % 56 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
23 Apr after 33.5 °C 44 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Apr after 34.3 °C 47 % 51 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Apr 2018
After · 29 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 · 71Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 April 2018 to 22 April 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 April 2018 to 18 April 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,515 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Liberia (1,525 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
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. Last day with fire: 18 April 2018 → 22 April 2018.

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 11 April 2018 to 18 April 2018. 71 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.