How long did the Santa Clara fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2017 to 23 March 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 March 2017 to 23 March 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,074 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Santa Clara (1,467 ha, 11 %); Dolores (432 ha, 3.1 %); San Isidro (138 ha, 1.9 %); San Esteban Catarina (50 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of El Salvador (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SV · El Salvador · 2017-03-13 → 2017-03-23

Santa Clara fire, March 2017 Santa Clara, Dolores, San Isidro

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2017, 18:57 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2017 in Santa Clara, El Salvador, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,074 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

Number 4 in El Salvador in 2017, of 17.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.4 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 Esteban Catarina · 2019 San Vicente · 2019 Victoria · 2026 Berlin · 2019

Burnt area: 2,074ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 13 Mar 2017 – 23 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit: 4; municipalities
Started on: 13 Mar; 2017
Heat detections: 64; in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Danger at start: 16; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 44MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar23 Mar

Play back 23 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

13 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 20 Mar 22 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

48km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Santa Clara where it started

1,467 ha reached on 17 Mar

11 %
Dolores

432 ha reached on 17 Mar

3.1 %
San Isidro

138 ha reached on 13 Mar

1.9 %
San Esteban Catarina

50 ha

0.6 %

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 area0.35 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
13 Mar	36.0 °C	36 %	25 km/h	1.8 mm	Moderate 16
14 Mar	38.0 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 32
15 Mar	36.2 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Mar	35.0 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
17 Mar	36.2 °C	27 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
18 Mar	35.4 °C	35 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Mar	38.1 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
20 Mar	37.8 °C	24 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
21 Mar	39.1 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
22 Mar	38.3 °C	14 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
23 Mar	37.8 °C	18 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
24 Mar after	37.9 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
25 Mar after	37.7 °C	25 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
26 Mar after	34.5 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 40
27 Mar after	34.0 °C	41 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
28 Mar after	33.2 °C	44 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
29 Mar after	33.9 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
30 Mar after	33.7 °C	44 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
31 Mar after	35.6 °C	42 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
1 Apr after	35.8 °C	42 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
2 Apr after	36.5 °C	37 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Mar 2017

After · 30 Mar 2017

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 · 64Every 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 El Salvador ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Santa Clara fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 March 2017 to 23 March 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 March 2017 to 23 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,074 hectares (20.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Santa Clara (1,467 ha, 11 %); Dolores (432 ha, 3.1 %); San Isidro (138 ha, 1.9 %); San Esteban Catarina (50 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of El Salvador (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: 911 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Protección Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 14 March 2017 → 13 March 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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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 14 March 2017 to 23 March 2017. 64 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 (Public Domain). 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