Skip to content
worldfires
en
GT · Guatemala · →

San Andrés fire, 7 April 2016 San Andrés, La Libertad

Out · last detection 20 Apr 2016, 19:18 UTC

The fire started on 7 April 2016 in San Andrés, Guatemala, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,150 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 114th largest in Petén since 2016 (of 157 with a page). Number 22 in Guatemala in 2016, of 33.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Andrés · 2025San Andrés · 2020San Andrés · 2017San Andrés · 2020

Burnt area
1,150ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
7 Apr 2016 – 20 Apr 2016
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Apr
2016
Heat detections
41
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
59MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Apr20 Apr
20 Apr 2016

How it evolved, day by day

7 Apr 2016 · 18 MW · 3 8 Apr 2016 · 25 MW · 3 9 Apr 2016 · 4 MW · 1 10 Apr 2016 · 14 MW · 2 11 Apr 2016 · 301 MW · 7 12 Apr 2016 · 142 MW · 8 13 Apr 2016 · 106 MW · 8 14 Apr 2016 · 8 MW · 1 17 Apr 2016 · 10 MW · 2 19 Apr 2016 · 16 MW · 4 20 Apr 2016 · 7 MW · 2
7 Apr 9 Apr 11 Apr 13 Apr 17 Apr 20 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

40°high
43km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 0.7% of the area of London (12 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. San Andrés 20,295 inhabitants where it started
    672 ha reached on 7 Apr
    0.1 %
  2. La Libertad
    484 ha reached on 9 Apr
    0.1 %

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 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 Apr 36.2 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Apr 35.9 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
9 Apr 34.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Apr 38.0 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Apr 39.7 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Apr 39.0 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Apr 39.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Apr 40.0 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Apr 39.7 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Apr 40.9 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Apr 40.4 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Apr 39.8 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 39
19 Apr 38.5 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Apr 37.7 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Apr after 39.2 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
22 Apr after 41.3 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Apr after 40.2 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
24 Apr after 40.7 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Mar 2016
After · 27 Apr 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 · 41Every 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 Guatemala ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the San Andrés fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 April 2016 to 20 April 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 April 2016 to 14 April 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,150 hectares (11.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Andrés (672 ha, 0.1 %); La Libertad (484 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Guatemala (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: 122 · 123 · 1566 · 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. Last day with fire: 14 April 2016 → 20 April 2016.

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 122 · 123 · 1566.

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 7 April 2016 to 14 April 2016. 41 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 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.