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Longaví fire, February 2023 Longaví

Out · last detection 24 Feb 2023, 05:08 UTC

The fire started on 3 February 2023 in Longaví, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,450 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 6th largest in Región del Maule since 2016 (of 52 with a page). Number 12 in Chile in 2023, of 70.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Longaví · 2023Linares · 2026Parral · 2026Parral · 2019

Burnt area
9,450ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
3 Feb 2023 – 24 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
1
communes
Started on
3 Feb
2023
Heat detections
828
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
465MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Feb24 Feb
24 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Feb 2023 · 5,342 MW · 111 4 Feb 2023 · 849 MW · 140 5 Feb 2023 · 50 MW · 21 6 Feb 2023 · 49 MW · 12 7 Feb 2023 · 144 MW · 15 8 Feb 2023 · 167 MW · 18 9 Feb 2023 · 246 MW · 30 10 Feb 2023 · 496 MW · 55 11 Feb 2023 · 180 MW · 46 12 Feb 2023 · 470 MW · 31 13 Feb 2023 · 155 MW · 17 14 Feb 2023 · 233 MW · 40 15 Feb 2023 · 348 MW · 55 16 Feb 2023 · 65 MW · 20 17 Feb 2023 · 161 MW · 24 18 Feb 2023 · 314 MW · 50 19 Feb 2023 · 231 MW · 55 20 Feb 2023 · 274 MW · 27 21 Feb 2023 · 154 MW · 28 22 Feb 2023 · 200 MW · 19 23 Feb 2023 · 100 MW · 13 24 Feb 2023 · 3 MW · 1
3 Feb 7 Feb 11 Feb 15 Feb 19 Feb 23 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

32°high
56km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (94 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. Longaví where it started
    9,488 ha
    6.5 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.72 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.72 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
3 Feb 32.5 °C 28 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Feb 26.6 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
5 Feb 23.2 °C 59 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
6 Feb 26.0 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Feb 26.4 °C 39 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Feb 25.8 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Feb 28.2 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Feb 27.3 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Feb 26.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Feb 22.2 °C 37 % 56 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
13 Feb 22.3 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Feb 23.0 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Feb 24.1 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Feb 20.7 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Feb 23.6 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
18 Feb 23.0 °C 36 % 51 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
19 Feb 23.7 °C 36 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
20 Feb 24.6 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
21 Feb 25.6 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Feb 24.3 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Feb 25.8 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Feb 22.8 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 21
25 Feb after 21.0 °C 38 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Feb after 23.4 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Feb after 26.5 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Feb after 26.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
1 Mar after 25.8 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Mar after 28.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Mar after 23.9 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Mar after 26.8 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Mar after 26.1 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Mar after 21.3 °C 49 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Jan 2023
After · 3 Mar 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 270 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 135: 9.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak270 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM10388 µg/m³
Optical depth2.61
123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 0Every 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 Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Longaví fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 February 2023 and 24 February 2023: 22 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 9,450 hectares (94.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Longaví (9,488 ha, 6.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (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: 130 (CONAF) · 132 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 27 February 2023 → 24 February 2023.
  2. Start date: 27 January 2023 → 3 February 2023.

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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

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. No 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 2025, 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 ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.