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Simón Planas fire, 13 March 2020 Simón Planas, San Rafael de Onoto, Peña

Out · last detection 23 Mar 2020, 18:04 UTC

The fire started on 13 March 2020 in Simón Planas, Venezuela, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,955 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 3 in Venezuela in 2020, of 402.

Burnt area
12,955ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
13 Mar 2020 – 23 Mar 2020
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
13 Mar
2020
Heat detections
611
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
3.2GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Mar 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Mar23 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

1314151617181920212223

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
49km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 3 Apr.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 725 ha in 2016.

What happened to each town

  1. Simón Planas 35,802 inhabitants where it started
    12,677 ha reached on 13 Mar
    15 %
  2. San Rafael de Onoto 18,403 inhabitants
    252 ha reached on 14 Mar
    1.1 %
  3. Peña 101,620 inhabitants
    107 ha reached on 21 Mar
    0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
13 Mar 37.0 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Mar 36.6 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Mar 36.0 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Mar 36.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Mar 36.3 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Mar 36.4 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Mar 35.8 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Mar 35.5 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Mar 36.3 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Mar 35.9 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Mar 35.0 °C 31 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
24 Mar after 36.5 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Mar after 35.7 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Mar after 36.3 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Mar after 38.0 °C 19 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Mar after 37.2 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Mar after 36.7 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Mar after 37.7 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Mar after 32.8 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Apr after 36.5 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Apr after 33.7 °C 40 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Apr after 30.7 °C 56 % 43 km/h 6.2 mm Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Mar 2020
After · 30 Mar 2020

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 · 611Every 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 Venezuela ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Simón Planas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 March 2020 and 23 March 2020: 11 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 12,955 hectares (129.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Simón Planas (12,677 ha, 15 %); San Rafael de Onoto (252 ha, 1.1 %); Peña (107 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Venezuela (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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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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 911.

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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). 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.