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Ortíz fire, 6 February 2016 Ortíz, Pao de San Juan Bautista

Out · last detection 18 Feb 2016, 05:51 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2016 in Ortíz, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,121 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 180th largest in Guárico since 2016 (of 421 with a page). Number 115 in Venezuela in 2016, of 238.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pao de San Juan Bautista · 2024Ortíz · 2023Ortíz · 2020Pao de San Juan Bautista · 2026

Burnt area
2,121ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
6 Feb 2016 – 18 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Feb
2016
Heat detections
60
in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
51MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb18 Feb
18 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 2016 · 54 MW · 6 7 Feb 2016 · 1 MW · 1 8 Feb 2016 · 32 MW · 8 9 Feb 2016 · 397 MW · 20 10 Feb 2016 · 26 MW · 7 11 Feb 2016 · 32 MW · 8 12 Feb 2016 · 4 MW · 3 14 Feb 2016 · 41 MW · 1 15 Feb 2016 · 9 MW · 1 16 Feb 2016 · 8 MW · 3 17 Feb 2016 · 2 MW · 1 18 Feb 2016 · 2 MW · 1
6 Feb 8 Feb 9 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 15 Feb 17 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

39°high
46km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 1.3% of the area of London (21 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. Ortíz 23,755 inhabitants where it started
    2,119 ha reached on 6 Feb
    0.5 %
  2. Pao de San Juan Bautista 16,810 inhabitants
    15 ha reached on 14 Feb
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 Feb 37.2 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Feb 39.3 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Feb 38.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Feb 37.7 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Feb 38.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Feb 37.8 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Feb 37.8 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Feb 37.9 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Feb 38.3 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Feb 38.6 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Feb 38.6 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Feb 39.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Feb 38.8 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
19 Feb after 39.5 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Feb after 39.1 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Feb after 38.6 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Feb after 38.9 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Feb after 37.5 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Feb after 38.2 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Feb after 38.5 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Feb after 38.3 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Feb after 37.9 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Feb after 38.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Jan 2016
After · 25 Feb 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 · 60Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ortíz fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 February 2016 to 18 February 2016 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2016 to 12 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,121 hectares (21.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ortíz (2,119 ha, 0.5 %); Pao de San Juan Bautista (15 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 12 February 2016 → 18 February 2016.

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
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 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 6 February 2016 to 12 February 2016. 60 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 2015, 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 (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.