How long did the Muñoz fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 March 2024 and 18 March 2024: 7 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 2,471 hectares (24.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Muñoz (2,486 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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.

VE · Venezuela · 2024-03-12 → 2024-03-18

Muñoz fire, 12 March 2024 Muñoz

Out · last detection 18 Mar 2024, 18:05 UTC

The fire started on 12 March 2024 in Muñoz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,471 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 380th largest in Apure since 2016 (of 919 with a page). Number 188 in Venezuela in 2024, of 482.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Rómulo Gallegos · 2024 Muñoz · 2020 Achaguas · 2026 Rómulo Gallegos · 2022

Burnt area: 2,471ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 12 Mar 2024 – 18 Mar 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 12 Mar; 2024
Heat detections: 70; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 114MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 18 Mar 2024

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Mar18 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

12 Mar 13 Mar 14 Mar 15 Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar

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

40km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 117 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

2,486 ha reached on 12 Mar

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)
12 Mar	38.0 °C	32 %	32 km/h	High 31
13 Mar	38.0 °C	35 %	30 km/h	High 32
14 Mar	38.2 °C	35 %	31 km/h	High 32
15 Mar	37.9 °C	34 %	35 km/h	High 36
16 Mar	38.3 °C	30 %	38 km/h	High 38
17 Mar	38.0 °C	36 %	36 km/h	High 36
18 Mar	37.5 °C	38 %	40 km/h	Very high 39
19 Mar after	36.2 °C	39 %	37 km/h	High 36
20 Mar after	38.6 °C	33 %	37 km/h	High 37
21 Mar after	38.6 °C	31 %	35 km/h	High 36
22 Mar after	36.7 °C	36 %	41 km/h	Very high 40
23 Mar after	37.0 °C	32 %	37 km/h	Very high 38
24 Mar after	36.6 °C	36 %	30 km/h	High 34
25 Mar after	36.7 °C	39 %	19 km/h	High 30
26 Mar after	37.1 °C	37 %	24 km/h	High 32
27 Mar after	36.7 °C	40 %	31 km/h	High 36
28 Mar after	36.5 °C	35 %	27 km/h	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Mar 2024

After · 25 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 16 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 39: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³

Days over the guideline12 days

PM1083 µg/m³

Optical depth1.46

WHO 15

101112131415161718192021

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 · 70Every 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 12 March 2024 and 18 March 2024: 7 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 2,471 hectares (24.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Muñoz (2,486 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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

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. 70 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