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Puerto Gaitán fire, 7 January 2016 Puerto Gaitán, Mapiripán

Out · last detection 30 Jan 2016, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 7 January 2016 in Puerto Gaitán, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,765 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in Meta since 2016 (of 257 with a page). The largest in Colombia in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Puerto Gaitán · 2020Puerto Gaitán · 2024Puerto Gaitán · 2025Puerto Gaitán · 2022

Burnt area
32,765ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
7 Jan 2016 – 30 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Jan
2016
Heat detections
1,032
in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
286MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jan30 Jan
30 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

7 Jan 2016 · 206 MW · 5 8 Jan 2016 · 69 MW · 11 9 Jan 2016 · 212 MW · 26 10 Jan 2016 · 865 MW · 80 11 Jan 2016 · 219 MW · 49 12 Jan 2016 · 234 MW · 23 13 Jan 2016 · 87 MW · 17 14 Jan 2016 · 228 MW · 42 15 Jan 2016 · 243 MW · 67 16 Jan 2016 · 171 MW · 49 17 Jan 2016 · 544 MW · 75 18 Jan 2016 · 380 MW · 50 19 Jan 2016 · 931 MW · 89 20 Jan 2016 · 504 MW · 142 21 Jan 2016 · 575 MW · 104 22 Jan 2016 · 389 MW · 49 23 Jan 2016 · 205 MW · 52 24 Jan 2016 · 45 MW · 19 25 Jan 2016 · 42 MW · 12 26 Jan 2016 · 19 MW · 6 27 Jan 2016 · 54 MW · 15 28 Jan 2016 · 382 MW · 28 29 Jan 2016 · 241 MW · 21 30 Jan 2016 · 7 MW · 1
7 Jan 11 Jan 15 Jan 19 Jan 23 Jan 27 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
48km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 7 Feb.

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 21% of the area of London (328 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 Gaitán 41,017 inhabitants where it started
    29,596 ha reached on 7 Jan
    1.7 %
  2. Mapiripán 17,229 inhabitants
    3,366 ha reached on 7 Jan
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
7 Jan 31.6 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
8 Jan 33.2 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
9 Jan 33.3 °C 43 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
10 Jan 34.1 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
11 Jan 33.7 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
12 Jan 33.9 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
13 Jan 33.7 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
14 Jan 33.8 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
15 Jan 34.0 °C 39 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
16 Jan 34.0 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
17 Jan 34.1 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
18 Jan 34.4 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Jan 34.3 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
20 Jan 34.0 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
21 Jan 34.6 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
22 Jan 34.7 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
23 Jan 34.8 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
24 Jan 34.9 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
25 Jan 35.5 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Jan 34.8 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Jan 34.0 °C 36 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Jan 34.7 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
29 Jan 34.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
30 Jan 34.6 °C 35 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Jan after 34.5 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Feb after 34.8 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
2 Feb after 33.9 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
3 Feb after 32.9 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
4 Feb after 33.9 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Feb after 35.2 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
6 Feb after 33.8 °C 41 % 39 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
7 Feb after 32.1 °C 55 % 32 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Dec 2015
After · 6 Feb 2016

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 · 1,032Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Puerto Gaitán fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 January 2016 and 30 January 2016: 24 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 32,765 hectares (327.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Puerto Gaitán (29,596 ha, 1.7 %); Mapiripán (3,366 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Colombia (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: 123 · 119 · 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 123 · 119.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,032 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 2015, 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 International (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.