How long did the Muñoz fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 April 2019 to 11 April 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 April 2019 to 5 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,231 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Muñoz (5,266 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.

Where does this data come from?

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

VE · Venezuela · 2019-04-02 → 2019-04-11

Muñoz fire, April 2019 Muñoz

Out · last detection 8 Apr 2019, 06:21 UTC

The fire started on 2 April 2019 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,231 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 77th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 21 in Venezuela in 2019, of 297.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muñoz · 2017 Muñoz · 2026 Muñoz · 2024 Muñoz · 2021

Burnt area: 5,231ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 2 Apr 2019 – 11 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 2 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 201; in a single hotspot: 190 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 676MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Apr11 Apr

Play back 8 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

2 Apr 3 Apr 4 Apr 5 Apr 6 Apr 7 Apr 8 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

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.7 mm on 13 Apr.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,965 ha in 2017.

1,965 ha Muñoz fire, April 2017 2,066 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (52 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

Muñoz 27,542 inhabitants where it started

5,266 ha reached on 2 Apr

0.7 %

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)
2 Apr	35.1 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
3 Apr	35.3 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Apr	35.4 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
5 Apr	35.0 °C	33 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
6 Apr	35.7 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Apr	35.4 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
8 Apr	35.3 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
9 Apr	33.2 °C	49 %	23 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 20
10 Apr	35.1 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	High 22
11 Apr	37.7 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
12 Apr after	35.3 °C	42 %	24 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
13 Apr after	33.6 °C	55 %	30 km/h	13.7 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Mar 2019

After · 18 Apr 2019

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 · 201Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Muñoz fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 April 2019 to 11 April 2019 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 April 2019 to 5 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,231 hectares (52.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Muñoz (5,266 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class High.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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 ›

Protección Civil ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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 2 April 2019 to 5 April 2019. 201 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 ADM2 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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