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PY · Paraguay · –

Puerto Casado fire, 8 September 2022 Puerto Casado

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2022, 04:37 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2022 in Puerto Casado, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,966 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 26th largest in ALTO PARAGUAY since 2016 (of 383 with a page). Number 11 in Paraguay in 2022, of 184.

Burnt area
6,966ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
8 Sept 2022 – 13 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
8 Sept
2022
Heat detections
203
in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
307MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept13 Sept
13 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 2022 · 266 MW · 3 9 Sept 2022 · 645 MW · 73 10 Sept 2022 · 361 MW · 43 11 Sept 2022 · 375 MW · 49 12 Sept 2022 · 141 MW · 25 13 Sept 2022 · 54 MW · 10
9 Sept 12 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

38°high
72km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.7 mm on 14 Sept.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 111 ha in 2016, 905 ha in 2018, 923 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,468 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Puerto Casado where it started
    6,973 ha reached on 8 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area0.14 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 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)

Started with Strong wind: 23 % of the area in Paraguay

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
8 Sept 38.3 °C 25 % 72 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
9 Sept 35.4 °C 33 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
10 Sept 22.9 °C 46 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm High 21
11 Sept 29.2 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Sept 29.9 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
13 Sept 27.3 °C 37 % 36 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 21
14 Sept after 22.0 °C 64 % 30 km/h 8.7 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 63.8, a minimum humidity of 25% and 1 day without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 31.

FWI at the start 63.8
Minimum humidity 25 %
Days without rain 1
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Bahía Negra fire, September 2019
21,582 ha 12 days FWI 61.9 Min. humidity 24 % 194 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 3.7 mm on 25 Sept.

What happened to them

6 days
median duration
5,153 ha
median area
23 %
went past 10,000 ha
3.4 mm
rain at the end (median; 24 of 31 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (6,966 ha against a median of 5,153 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 6 days.

In 7 of 31, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.4 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

8.7 mmfirst rain
14 Septthe day after it ended
72km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 13 Sept, and on 14 Sept 8.7 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 24 of 31, with a median of 3.4 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Sept 2022
After · 20 Sept 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 9 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 118 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 87: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak118 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10169 µg/m³
Optical depth2.20
6 Sept9 Sept12 Sept15 Sept
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 203Every 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 Paraguay

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Puerto Casado fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 September 2022 and 13 September 2022: 6 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 6,966 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Puerto Casado (6,973 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 72 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 31. Their median duration was 6 days and their median area 5,153 ha; 23 % went past 10,000 ha. In 7 of 31, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 3.4 mm.

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: 132 · 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.

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 132 · 911.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 203 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.