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Petatlán fire, 27 April 2019 Petatlán, Zihuatanejo de Azueta

Out · last detection 19 May 2019, 08:32 UTC

The fire started on 27 April 2019 in Petatlán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,159 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 142th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 80 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coyuca de Catalán · 2019Coyuca de Catalán · 2024Coyuca de Catalán · 2020Coyuca de Catalán · 2021

Burnt area
4,159ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
27 Apr 2019 – 19 May 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
27 Apr
2019
Heat detections
206
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
53MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Apr19 May
19 May 2019

How it evolved, day by day

27 Apr 2019 · 29 MW · 7 28 Apr 2019 · 12 MW · 7 29 Apr 2019 · 17 MW · 6 30 Apr 2019 · 310 MW · 24 1 May 2019 · 181 MW · 26 2 May 2019 · 120 MW · 19 3 May 2019 · 160 MW · 19 4 May 2019 · 67 MW · 16 5 May 2019 · 7 MW · 5 6 May 2019 · 5 MW · 4 7 May 2019 · 137 MW · 14 8 May 2019 · 29 MW · 5 9 May 2019 · 41 MW · 11 10 May 2019 · 4 MW · 3 11 May 2019 · 10 MW · 4 12 May 2019 · 7 MW · 1 13 May 2019 · 9 MW · 6 14 May 2019 · 5 MW · 4 15 May 2019 · 16 MW · 4 16 May 2019 · 22 MW · 5 17 May 2019 · 13 MW · 10 18 May 2019 · 15 MW · 5 19 May 2019 · 1 MW · 1
27 Apr 30 Apr 1 May 5 May 9 May 13 May 17 May

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
41km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.8 mm on 24 May.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 115 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (42 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. Petatlán where it started
    3,277 ha reached on 27 Apr
    1.6 %
  2. Zihuatanejo de Azueta
    910 ha reached on 28 Apr
    0.6 %

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 area0.19 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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)
27 Apr 30.4 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Apr 29.8 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Apr 30.7 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Apr 31.1 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 May 30.7 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 May 31.1 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 May 30.2 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 May 28.6 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
5 May 28.7 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 May 28.7 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 May 30.8 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 May 30.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 May 29.1 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 May 28.8 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 May 28.6 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 May 28.3 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 May 28.4 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 May 28.8 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
15 May 28.3 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
16 May 28.4 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 May 27.7 °C 43 % 37 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 15
18 May 28.4 °C 48 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 18
19 May 29.9 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
20 May after 29.7 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 May after 30.1 °C 41 % 33 km/h 0.4 mm High 27
22 May after 29.0 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 May after 28.7 °C 49 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm High 24
24 May after 28.7 °C 52 % 26 km/h 7.8 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Apr 2019
After · 26 May 2019

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 · 206Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Petatlán fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 April 2019 and 19 May 2019: 23 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 4,159 hectares (41.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Petatlán (3,277 ha, 1.6 %); Zihuatanejo de Azueta (910 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.1 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mexico (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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 206 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 (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.