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PY · Paraguay · –

Puerto Casado fire, 30 July 2024 Puerto Casado

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2024, 05:21 UTC

The fire started on 30 July 2024 in Puerto Casado, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,478 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in ALTO PARAGUAY since 2016 (of 383 with a page). Number 3 in Paraguay in 2024, of 188.

Burnt area
19,478ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
30 Jul 2024 – 4 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
30 Jul
2024
Heat detections
669
in a single hotspot: 246 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Jul4 Aug
4 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

30 Jul 2024 · 13 MW · 2 31 Jul 2024 · 171 MW · 16 1 Aug 2024 · 3,643 MW · 69 2 Aug 2024 · 5,631 MW · 544 3 Aug 2024 · 109 MW · 26 4 Aug 2024 · 55 MW · 12
30 Jul 2 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
67km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 7 Aug.

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 13 ha in 2016, 407 ha in 2017, 1,379 ha in 2018, 162 ha in 2020, 883 ha in 2021, 5,899 ha in 2022, 8,875 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,318 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (195 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
    19,506 ha reached on 30 Jul
    1.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area1.0 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 Jul 19.5 °C 74 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 3
31 Jul 33.1 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
1 Aug 36.7 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Aug 37.3 °C 20 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
3 Aug 36.8 °C 24 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
4 Aug 33.4 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Aug after 35.7 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Aug after 35.1 °C 21 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
7 Aug after 30.5 °C 28 % 39 km/h 1.3 mm Very high 40

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 3.3, a minimum humidity of 74% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 13.

FWI at the start 3.3
Minimum humidity 74 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Filadelfia fire, June 2019
4,344 ha 16 days FWI 0.4 Min. humidity 71 % 188 km away, in 2019

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 2.2 mm on 19 Jun.

What happened to them

Fires in the area that started in similar weather: 13. With fewer than 15 we give no figures: they would be more noise than signal.

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

1.3 mmfirst rain
7 Aug3 days after it ended
67km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 4 Aug, and on 7 Aug 1.3 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out.

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 · 23 Jul 2024
After · 11 Aug 2024

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 5 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 152 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 94: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak152 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM10218 µg/m³
Optical depth1.94
29 Jul31 Jul2 Aug4 Aug6 Aug
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 · 669Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 July 2024 to 4 August 2024 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 July 2024 to 4 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,478 hectares (194.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Puerto Casado (19,506 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 70, 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.

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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 31 July 2024 → 30 July 2024.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 July 2024 to 4 August 2024. 669 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 2025, 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.