How long did the Orán fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2020 to 23 October 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2020 to 21 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,632 hectares (116.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Orán (11,365 ha, 1.0 %); Ledesma (332 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

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

AR · Argentina · 2020-10-06 → 2020-10-23

Orán fire, 6 October 2020 Orán, Ledesma

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2020, 17:43 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2020 in Orán, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,632 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Salta since 2016 (of 231 with a page). Number 23 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orán · 2022 Orán · 2025 Ledesma · 2022 Orán · 2022

Burnt area: 11,632ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 6 Oct 2020 – 23 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; departments
Started on: 6 Oct; 2020
Heat detections: 800; in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 450MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct23 Oct

Play back 23 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 8 Oct 11 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high

44km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 28 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 50 ha in 2016, 100 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 100 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.3% of the area of London (116 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

Orán where it started

11,365 ha reached on 6 Oct

1.0 %
Ledesma

332 ha reached on 11 Oct

0.1 %

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 area0.77 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.77 hectares of built-up land and about 60 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)
6 Oct	29.8 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Oct	35.1 °C	25 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
8 Oct	36.8 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Oct	31.9 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Oct	34.4 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
11 Oct	36.6 °C	17 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Oct	33.8 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Oct	34.1 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Oct	36.9 °C	22 %	44 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 42
15 Oct	28.2 °C	34 %	37 km/h	1.3 mm	High 23
16 Oct	30.8 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.4 mm	High 28
17 Oct	35.4 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Oct	40.1 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Oct	41.8 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Oct	36.7 °C	33 %	32 km/h	4.2 mm	Moderate 13
21 Oct	29.6 °C	52 %	32 km/h	20.6 mm	Very low 2
22 Oct	32.6 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
23 Oct	35.7 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
24 Oct after	36.5 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Oct after	39.7 °C	30 %	37 km/h	0.7 mm	High 25
26 Oct after	32.0 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.5 mm	High 36
27 Oct after	35.6 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
28 Oct after	38.6 °C	24 %	34 km/h	2.6 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Sept 2020

After · 30 Oct 2020

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 · 800Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Orán fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 October 2020 to 23 October 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2020 to 21 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,632 hectares (116.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Orán (11,365 ha, 1.0 %); Ledesma (332 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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 · 100 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

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.

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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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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 · 100.

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 6 October 2020 to 21 October 2020. 800 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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