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Tahuamanu fire, 27 August 2018 Tahuamanu

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2018, 06:09 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2018 in Tahuamanu, Peru, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,232 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Madre de Dios since 2016 (of 67 with a page). Number 5 in Peru in 2018, of 17.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tahuamanu · 2022Tahuamanu · 2024Tahuamanu · 2024Tahuamanu · 2024

Burnt area
2,232ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
27 Aug 2018 – 13 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
provinces
Started on
27 Aug
2018
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
103MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug13 Sept
13 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Aug 2018 · 394 MW · 3 28 Aug 2018 · 85 MW · 6 29 Aug 2018 · 2 MW · 2 31 Aug 2018 · 83 MW · 4 1 Sept 2018 · 121 MW · 16 2 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 2 3 Sept 2018 · 24 MW · 2 4 Sept 2018 · 64 MW · 5 5 Sept 2018 · 17 MW · 6 7 Sept 2018 · 93 MW · 4 8 Sept 2018 · 22 MW · 4 9 Sept 2018 · 95 MW · 7 10 Sept 2018 · 424 MW · 10 11 Sept 2018 · 213 MW · 6 12 Sept 2018 · 10 MW · 2 13 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 2
27 Aug 31 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
44km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 14 Sept.

This area had burned before

38% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 622 ha in 2016, 242 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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. Tahuamanu 4,648 inhabitants where it started
    2,249 ha reached on 27 Aug
    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 2020
Built-up area0.39 ha
Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.39 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
27 Aug 31.7 °C 34 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
28 Aug 35.1 °C 31 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
29 Aug 35.8 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
30 Aug 36.2 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
31 Aug 36.0 °C 39 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Sept 34.3 °C 46 % 37 km/h 3.5 mm Low 6
2 Sept 28.1 °C 69 % 40 km/h 19.8 mm Very low 0
3 Sept 28.9 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
4 Sept 31.8 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
5 Sept 32.5 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Sept 33.5 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Sept 35.4 °C 19 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
8 Sept 36.2 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
9 Sept 36.4 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
10 Sept 37.4 °C 26 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
11 Sept 36.7 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Sept 36.2 °C 42 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 21
13 Sept 37.0 °C 33 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
14 Sept after 34.9 °C 40 % 27 km/h 2.9 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2018
After · 20 Sept 2018

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 · 81Every 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 Peru ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tahuamanu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 August 2018 to 13 September 2018 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2018 to 13 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,232 hectares (22.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tahuamanu (2,249 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Peru (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: 116 · 105 · 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. Start date: 31 August 2018 → 27 August 2018.

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 116 · 105.

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 31 August 2018 to 13 September 2018. 81 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 2020, 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.