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Muñoz fire, 11 February 2020 Muñoz

Out · last detection 21 Feb 2020, 17:45 UTC

The fire started on 11 February 2020 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,087 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 505th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 199 in Venezuela in 2020, of 401.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muñoz · 2019Muñoz · 2026Muñoz · 2021Muñoz · 2020

Burnt area
2,087ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
11 Feb 2020 – 21 Feb 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Feb
2020
Heat detections
65
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Feb21 Feb
21 Feb 2020

How it evolved, day by day

11 Feb 2020 · 429 MW · 18 12 Feb 2020 · 102 MW · 13 13 Feb 2020 · 261 MW · 17 14 Feb 2020 · 34 MW · 5 15 Feb 2020 · 107 MW · 9 16 Feb 2020 · 12 MW · 1 18 Feb 2020 · 1 MW · 1 21 Feb 2020 · 10 MW · 1
11 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 18 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
48km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 20 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Muñoz 27,542 inhabitants where it started
    2,101 ha reached on 11 Feb
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Feb 35.7 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Feb 35.6 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Feb 35.8 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Feb 35.2 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Feb 35.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Feb 37.4 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Feb 36.3 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Feb 35.3 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 38
19 Feb 38.6 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Feb 37.5 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 41
21 Feb 35.9 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Feb after 37.1 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Feb after 36.5 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Feb after 37.4 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Feb after 37.3 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
26 Feb after 36.9 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Feb after 38.4 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Feb after 36.6 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Feb after 37.1 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Mar after 36.2 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Mar after 37.6 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Feb 2020
After · 28 Feb 2020

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 · 65Every 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 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 11 February 2020 to 21 February 2020 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 February 2020 to 18 February 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,087 hectares (20.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Muñoz (2,101 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % 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 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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

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.

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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 11 February 2020 to 18 February 2020. 65 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 (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.