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Mulchén fire, January 2023 Mulchén, Collipulli

Out · last detection 12 Feb 2023, 05:33 UTC

The fire started on 31 January 2023 in Mulchén, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,526 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Región del Bío-Bío since 2016 (of 74 with a page). Number 8 in Chile in 2023, of 70.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mulchén · 2022Collipulli · 2020Mulchén · 2023Collipulli · 2023

Burnt area
11,526ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
31 Jan 2023 – 12 Feb 2023
Municipalities hit
2
communes
Started on
31 Jan
2023
Heat detections
1,018
in a single hotspot: 213 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jan12 Feb
12 Feb 2023

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jan 2023 · 2 MW · 2 3 Feb 2023 · 661 MW · 41 4 Feb 2023 · 2,857 MW · 229 5 Feb 2023 · 1,779 MW · 95 6 Feb 2023 · 3,452 MW · 190 7 Feb 2023 · 7,185 MW · 259 8 Feb 2023 · 1,451 MW · 108 9 Feb 2023 · 588 MW · 65 10 Feb 2023 · 98 MW · 19 11 Feb 2023 · 8 MW · 7 12 Feb 2023 · 5 MW · 3
31 Jan 4 Feb 6 Feb 7 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 12 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

39°high
67km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 218 ha in 2020, 536 ha in 2021, 617 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (115 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. Mulchén where it started
    7,518 ha reached on 3 Feb
    3.9 %
  2. Collipulli
    4,032 ha reached on 31 Jan
    3.1 %

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)
31 Jan 27.1 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Feb 26.3 °C 40 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Feb 28.5 °C 34 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Feb 39.3 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Feb 34.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Feb 28.2 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Feb 29.0 °C 36 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
7 Feb 28.8 °C 28 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Feb 28.8 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Feb 29.6 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Feb 27.4 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Feb 27.2 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
12 Feb 23.7 °C 53 % 41 km/h 0.6 mm High 24
13 Feb after 22.8 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
14 Feb after 21.7 °C 49 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Feb after 23.0 °C 49 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Feb after 21.2 °C 36 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Feb after 26.7 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Feb after 28.0 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Feb after 26.2 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Feb after 26.4 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Feb after 27.4 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Feb after 27.8 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jan 2023
After · 19 Feb 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 788 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 430: 29 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak788 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM101,129 µg/m³
Optical depth3.90
123456789101112131415
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 · 1,018Every 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 Mulchén fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 January 2023 to 12 February 2023 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 February 2023 to 12 February 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,526 hectares (115.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mulchén (7,518 ha, 3.9 %); Collipulli (4,032 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 3 February 2023 → 31 January 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 February 2023 to 12 February 2023. 1,018 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 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.