How long did the Riosucio fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 April 2016 to 18 April 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 April 2016 to 18 April 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,631 hectares (36.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Riosucio (3,656 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.

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.

CO · Colombia · 2016-04-03 → 2016-04-18

Riosucio fire, 3 April 2016 Riosucio

Out · last detection 18 Apr 2016, 18:12 UTC

The fire started on 3 April 2016 in Riosucio, Colombia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,631 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 34 in Colombia in 2016, of 160.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Riosucio · 2016 Turbo · 2016 Turbo · 2016 Turbo · 2016

Burnt area: 3,631ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 3 Apr 2016 – 18 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 3 Apr; 2016
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 80 MW
Danger at start: 18; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 147MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Apr18 Apr

Play back 18 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

3 Apr 6 Apr 11 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 18 Apr

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

47km/h · peak gust

37%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.6 mm on 19 Apr.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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

Riosucio where it started

3,656 ha reached on 3 Apr

0.5 %

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.

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)
3 Apr	36.6 °C	37 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
4 Apr	36.1 °C	46 %	27 km/h	3.3 mm	Low 6
5 Apr	36.9 °C	44 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
6 Apr	36.0 °C	47 %	47 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
7 Apr	34.7 °C	52 %	42 km/h	0.7 mm	Moderate 15
8 Apr	36.1 °C	51 %	41 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 18
9 Apr	36.5 °C	44 %	43 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 18
10 Apr	34.3 °C	57 %	45 km/h	14.8 mm	Very low 2
11 Apr	35.0 °C	55 %	35 km/h	4.2 mm	Very low 2
12 Apr	31.1 °C	61 %	34 km/h	7.6 mm	Very low 0
13 Apr	34.8 °C	41 %	27 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 7
14 Apr	35.4 °C	48 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
15 Apr	35.9 °C	52 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 12
16 Apr	37.2 °C	46 %	30 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 6
17 Apr	37.6 °C	52 %	20 km/h	3.9 mm	Very low 2
18 Apr	36.1 °C	52 %	29 km/h	4.3 mm	Very low 2
19 Apr after	33.0 °C	64 %	26 km/h	11.6 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Mar 2016

After · 25 Apr 2016

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 · 93Every 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 Colombia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Riosucio fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 April 2016 to 18 April 2016 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 April 2016 to 18 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,631 hectares (36.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Riosucio (3,656 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, class Moderate.
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 ›

UNGRD · Gestión del Riesgo de Desastres ↗
IDEAM ↗

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.

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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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 April 2016 to 18 April 2016. 93 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.

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.

Where it burned