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Orocué fire, 5 March 2016 Orocué

Out · last detection 6 Mar 2016, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2016 in Orocué, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,575 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 64th largest in Casanare since 2016 (of 65 with a page). Number 150 in Colombia in 2016, of 160.

The power measured by the satellite is low (23.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Orocué · 2016Orocué · 2026Orocué · 2020Orocué · 2019

Burnt area
1,575ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
2days
5 Mar 2016 – 6 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Mar
2016
Heat detections
39
in a single hotspot: 24 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
140MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar6 Mar
6 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2016 · 60 MW · 9 6 Mar 2016 · 218 MW · 30
5 Mar 6 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
38km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 15 Mar.

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. Orocué where it started
    1,585 ha reached on 5 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Mar 36.9 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Mar 37.9 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Mar after 36.6 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
8 Mar after 35.7 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
9 Mar after 36.2 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Mar after 37.0 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Mar after 36.4 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Mar after 36.2 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Mar after 34.7 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Mar after 34.9 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
15 Mar after 33.0 °C 54 % 32 km/h 4.6 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2016
After · 13 Mar 2016

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 · 39Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Orocué fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 March 2016 and 6 March 2016: 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 1,575 hectares (15.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Orocué (1,585 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119

Satellite cross-check

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?

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 123 · 119.

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. 39 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 (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.