How long did the Muñoz fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 February 2024 and 25 February 2024: 2 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 2,372 hectares (23.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Muñoz (2,388 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 · 2024-02-24 → 2024-02-25

Muñoz fire, 24 February 2024 Muñoz

Out · last detection 25 Feb 2024, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 24 February 2024 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,372 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 406th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 205 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Muñoz · 2026 Muñoz · 2020 Muñoz · 2025 Muñoz · 2021

Burnt area: 2,372ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 2days; 24 Feb 2024 – 25 Feb 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 24 Feb; 2024
Heat detections: 51; in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 495MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Feb25 Feb

Play back 25 Feb 2024

How it evolved, day by day

24 Feb 25 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

37°high

41km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 58 ha in 2020, 425 ha in 2021, 176 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

2,388 ha reached on 24 Feb

0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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	Danger (FWI)
24 Feb	36.7 °C	28 %	38 km/h	High 33
25 Feb	37.0 °C	33 %	41 km/h	High 35
26 Feb after	35.3 °C	40 %	41 km/h	High 30
27 Feb after	35.6 °C	30 %	35 km/h	High 29
28 Feb after	36.0 °C	32 %	40 km/h	High 31
29 Feb after	36.3 °C	28 %	39 km/h	High 33
1 Mar after	36.4 °C	29 %	42 km/h	High 35
2 Mar after	35.4 °C	31 %	40 km/h	High 34
3 Mar after	36.1 °C	30 %	38 km/h	High 34
4 Mar after	37.0 °C	31 %	36 km/h	High 35
5 Mar after	37.5 °C	34 %	38 km/h	High 35
6 Mar after	36.3 °C	40 %	36 km/h	High 33
7 Mar after	38.2 °C	35 %	33 km/h	High 31

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Feb 2024

After · 3 Mar 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³

Days over the guideline5 days

PM1055 µg/m³

Optical depth0.66

WHO 15

22232425262728

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 · 51Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 February 2024 and 25 February 2024: 2 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 2,372 hectares (23.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Muñoz (2,388 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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

Protección Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 51 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