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Pirané fire, September 2019 Pirané

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2019, 17:17 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2019 in Pirané, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,515 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 240th largest in Formosa since 2016 (of 620 with a page). Number 67 in Argentina in 2019, of 158.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pirané · 2020Patiño · 2020Patiño · 2023Patiño · 2024

Burnt area
2,515ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
15 Sept 2019 – 1 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
departments
Started on
15 Sept
2019
Heat detections
183
in a single hotspot: 276 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
255MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept1 Oct
1 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2019 · 2,053 MW · 20 16 Sept 2019 · 323 MW · 59 18 Sept 2019 · 3 MW · 1 19 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1 22 Sept 2019 · 50 MW · 5 23 Sept 2019 · 43 MW · 3 24 Sept 2019 · 3 MW · 2 25 Sept 2019 · 8 MW · 2 26 Sept 2019 · 16 MW · 3 27 Sept 2019 · 115 MW · 12 28 Sept 2019 · 108 MW · 8 29 Sept 2019 · 159 MW · 14 30 Sept 2019 · 274 MW · 20 1 Oct 2019 · 416 MW · 33
15 Sept 18 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 Sept 30 Sept

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
70km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.6 mm on 2 Oct.

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 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. Pirané where it started
    2,518 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.3 %

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 area0.10 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
22 Sept 26.9 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Sept 29.7 °C 38 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
24 Sept 30.6 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
25 Sept 28.9 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 20
26 Sept 29.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
27 Sept 32.0 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
28 Sept 34.5 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Sept 36.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
30 Sept 38.0 °C 32 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct 39.2 °C 24 % 70 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 49
2 Oct after 23.9 °C 69 % 68 km/h 5.6 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2019
After · 8 Oct 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 · 183Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pirané fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2019 to 1 October 2019 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 September 2019 to 1 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,515 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pirané (2,518 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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 · 100 · 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.

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 · 100.

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 22 September 2019 to 1 October 2019. 183 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.