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San Luis fire, June 2023 San Luis

Out · last detection 21 Jun 2023, 19:30 UTC

The fire started on 11 June 2023 in San Luis, Guatemala, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,109 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 127th largest in Petén since 2016 (of 157 with a page). Number 20 in Guatemala in 2023, of 26.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Luis · 2016Fray Bartolomé de las Casas · 2016El Estor · 2024Toledo · 2024

Burnt area
1,109ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
11 Jun 2023 – 22 Jun 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Jun
2023
Heat detections
35
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
22MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jun22 Jun
21 Jun 2023

How it evolved, day by day

11 Jun 2023 · 7 MW · 1 12 Jun 2023 · 26 MW · 3 13 Jun 2023 · 26 MW · 4 15 Jun 2023 · 11 MW · 4 16 Jun 2023 · 19 MW · 3 17 Jun 2023 · 26 MW · 11 18 Jun 2023 · 60 MW · 8 21 Jun 2023 · 5 MW · 1
11 Jun 13 Jun 16 Jun 18 Jun

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
46km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 20 Jun.

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 812 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 0.7% of the area of London (11 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 Luis 48,745 inhabitants where it started
    1,115 ha reached on 11 Jun
    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 2025
Built-up area0.13 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
11 Jun 39.7 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jun 39.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jun 38.8 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 35
14 Jun 36.9 °C 44 % 39 km/h 1.1 mm High 23
15 Jun 36.5 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
16 Jun 37.7 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.4 mm High 33
17 Jun 37.7 °C 33 % 41 km/h 1.1 mm High 30
18 Jun 36.3 °C 39 % 46 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 20
19 Jun 34.9 °C 41 % 37 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 21
20 Jun 34.9 °C 44 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jun 2023
After · 29 Jun 2023

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 10 June 2023 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1062 µg/m³
Optical depth1.06
910111213141516171819202122
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 · 35Every 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 Luis fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 June 2023 to 22 June 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 June 2023 to 19 June 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,109 hectares (11.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Luis (1,115 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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: 19 June 2023 → 22 June 2023.

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 11 June 2023 to 19 June 2023. 35 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 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.