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Olanchito fire, April 2020 Olanchito, Gualaco, Guata

Out · last detection 30 Apr 2020, 19:35 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2020 in Olanchito, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,638 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 10th largest in Yoro since 2016 (of 36 with a page). Number 87 in Honduras in 2020, of 174.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guata · 2020Gualaco · 2020La Unión · 2020

Burnt area
1,638ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
7 Apr 2020 – 1 May 2020
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
7 Apr
2020
Heat detections
102
in a single hotspot: 136 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
70MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr1 May
30 Apr 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 2020 · 1 MW · 1 9 Apr 2020 · 32 MW · 4 12 Apr 2020 · 4 MW · 2 13 Apr 2020 · 13 MW · 3 14 Apr 2020 · 77 MW · 9 15 Apr 2020 · 15 MW · 3 17 Apr 2020 · 187 MW · 7 18 Apr 2020 · 5 MW · 4 19 Apr 2020 · 9 MW · 4 20 Apr 2020 · 265 MW · 9 21 Apr 2020 · 4 MW · 2 23 Apr 2020 · 89 MW · 9 24 Apr 2020 · 308 MW · 27 25 Apr 2020 · 21 MW · 8 29 Apr 2020 · 70 MW · 5 30 Apr 2020 · 13 MW · 5
7 Apr 13 Apr 17 Apr 20 Apr 24 Apr 30 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

34°high
40km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 22 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 30 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1% of the area of London (16 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. Olanchito where it started
    1,471 ha reached on 7 Apr
    0.7 %
  2. Gualaco
    164 ha reached on 13 Apr
    0.1 %
  3. Guata
    7 ha
    0.0 %
  4. Esquipulas del Norte
    5 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.41 ha
Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.41 hectares of built-up land and about 80 residents (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)
14 Apr 33.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Apr 32.8 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Apr 32.5 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
17 Apr 31.6 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Apr 32.8 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Apr 32.6 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Apr 34.2 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Apr 32.6 °C 37 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Apr 32.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Apr 32.9 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
24 Apr 34.4 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Apr 32.8 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Apr 32.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
27 Apr 32.5 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm High 36
28 Apr 30.5 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
29 Apr 31.6 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Apr 30.5 °C 44 % 33 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Mar 2020
After · 8 May 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 · 102Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Olanchito fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2020 to 1 May 2020 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 April 2020 to 25 April 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,638 hectares (16.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Olanchito (1,471 ha, 0.7 %); Gualaco (164 ha, 0.1 %); Guata (7 ha, 0.0 %); Esquipulas del Norte (5 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 40 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 Honduras (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.

Report an error
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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 14 April 2020 to 25 April 2020. 102 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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.