How long did the Petatlán fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 April 2019 to 25 May 2019 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 May 2019 to 25 May 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,278 hectares (102.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Coyuca de Catalán (10,227 ha, 3.0 %); Zihuatanejo de Azueta (97 ha, 0.1 %); Petatlán (2 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

MX · Mexico · 2019-04-30 → 2019-05-25

Petatlán fire, 30 April 2019 Coyuca de Catalán, Zihuatanejo de Azueta, Petatlán

Out · last detection 25 May 2019, 08:20 UTC

The fire started on 30 April 2019 in Petatlán, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,278 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 23 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coyuca de Catalán · 2017 Coyuca de Catalán · 2017 Coyuca de Catalán · 2024 Coyuca de Catalán · 2019

Burnt area: 10,278ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 30 Apr 2019 – 25 May 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 30 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 566; in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 111MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Apr25 May

Play back 25 May 2019

How it evolved, day by day

30 Apr 4 May 8 May 12 May 16 May 20 May 25 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

38km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 26 May.

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 775 ha in 2016, 6,245 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,342 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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

Coyuca de Catalán

10,227 ha reached on 30 Apr

3.0 %
Zihuatanejo de Azueta

97 ha reached on 14 May

0.1 %
Petatlán where it started

2 ha reached on 30 Apr

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 2020

Built-up area0.93 ha

Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.93 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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)
30 Apr	30.6 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 May	30.9 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
2 May	31.0 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
3 May	30.1 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
4 May	28.5 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
5 May	28.4 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
6 May	28.9 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 May	30.5 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 May	30.3 °C	12 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 May	29.5 °C	18 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 May	28.9 °C	21 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 May	29.0 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
12 May	28.8 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
13 May	28.7 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
14 May	28.1 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
15 May	27.7 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 29
16 May	28.0 °C	37 %	35 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 21
17 May	26.8 °C	43 %	36 km/h	1.9 mm	Low 9
18 May	28.3 °C	40 %	34 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 12
19 May	30.2 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 May	29.9 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
21 May	30.0 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
22 May	28.6 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 May	28.7 °C	42 %	27 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 17
24 May	27.6 °C	41 %	31 km/h	9.0 mm	Very low 4
25 May	26.2 °C	52 %	31 km/h	8.6 mm	Very low 1
26 May after	27.3 °C	51 %	28 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Apr 2019

After · 1 Jun 2019

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 · 566Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Petatlán fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 April 2019 to 25 May 2019 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 May 2019 to 25 May 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,278 hectares (102.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Coyuca de Catalán (10,227 ha, 3.0 %); Zihuatanejo de Azueta (97 ha, 0.1 %); Petatlán (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 31.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

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.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 May 2019 to 25 May 2019. 566 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.

Where it burned