How long did the Manto fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2020 to 13 April 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2020 to 6 April 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,524 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Manto (1,523 ha, 2.9 %); Silca (10 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Honduras (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

HN · Honduras · 2020-03-27 → 2020-04-13

Manto fire, 27 March 2020 Manto, Silca

Out · last detection 14 Apr 2020, 19:35 UTC

The fire started on 27 March 2020 in Manto, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,524 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 88th largest in Olancho since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 98 in Honduras in 2020, of 174.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.6 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: Manto · 2020 Salamá · 2019 Juticalpa · 2020 Juticalpa · 2020

Burnt area: 1,524ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 27 Mar 2020 – 13 Apr 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 27 Mar; 2020
Heat detections: 64; in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 24MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Mar13 Apr

Play back 14 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

27 Mar 29 Mar 1 Apr 2 Apr 3 Apr 5 Apr 9 Apr 14 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

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

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

Manto where it started

1,523 ha reached on 27 Mar

2.9 %
Silca

10 ha

0.0 %

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 area2.2 ha

Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.2 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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)
27 Mar	33.2 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
28 Mar	34.3 °C	23 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
29 Mar	34.1 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
30 Mar	31.7 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Mar	34.9 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Apr	34.7 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Apr	37.8 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Apr	36.2 °C	26 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
4 Apr	35.8 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 41
5 Apr	35.4 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Apr	35.4 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Apr	34.9 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
8 Apr	35.5 °C	29 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Apr	35.3 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Apr	37.9 °C	17 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
11 Apr	35.0 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Apr	34.8 °C	27 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
13 Apr	35.9 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Apr after	34.8 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
15 Apr after	35.4 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
16 Apr after	35.1 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Mar 2020

After · 20 Apr 2020

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 · 64Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Manto fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 March 2020 to 13 April 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 March 2020 to 6 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,524 hectares (15.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Manto (1,523 ha, 2.9 %); Silca (10 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Honduras (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 ›

ICF · Instituto de Conservación Forestal ↗
COPECO ↗

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.

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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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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 27 March 2020 to 6 April 2020. 64 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.

Where it burned