Skip to content
worldfires
VE · Venezuela · →

Pedraza fire, 14 February 2022 Pedraza

Out · last detection 17 Feb 2022, 17:14 UTC

The fire started on 14 February 2022 in Pedraza, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,860 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 68th largest in Barinas since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 138 in Venezuela in 2022, of 205.

Burnt area
1,860ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Feb 2022 – 17 Feb 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Feb
2022
Heat detections
84
in a single hotspot: 255 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.8GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Feb 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Feb17 Feb

How it evolved, day by day

14151617

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
41km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 26 Feb.

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 991 ha in 2019, 1,090 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,146 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Pedraza 6,568 inhabitants where it started
    1,871 ha reached on 14 Feb
    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)
14 Feb 34.0 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 Feb 33.4 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Feb 33.9 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
17 Feb 34.3 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Feb after 33.4 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Feb after 33.9 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Feb after 34.5 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
21 Feb after 34.7 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Feb after 35.2 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
23 Feb after 34.5 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
24 Feb after 33.8 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Feb after 33.1 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
26 Feb after 33.2 °C 48 % 32 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Feb 2022
After · 24 Feb 2022

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 · 84Every 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 Pedraza fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 February 2022 and 17 February 2022: 4 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 1,860 hectares (18.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pedraza (1,871 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, class 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

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 911.

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.