How long did the Temuco fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 February 2019 and 7 February 2019: 7 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 5,942 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Galvarino (4,459 ha, 7.8 %); Temuco (1,381 ha, 3.0 %); Lautaro (112 ha, 0.1 %).

Where does this data come from?

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

CL · Chile · 2019-02-01 → 2019-02-07

Temuco fire, February 2019 Galvarino, Temuco, Lautaro

Out · last detection 8 Feb 2019, 19:01 UTC

The fire started on 1 February 2019 in Temuco, Chile, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,942 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 13th largest in Región de La Araucanía since 2016 (of 159 with a page). Number 2 in Chile in 2019, of 44.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Galvarino · 2022 Perquenco · 2026 Galvarino · 2023 Traiguén · 2025

Burnt area: 5,942ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 1 Feb 2019 – 7 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit: 3; communes
Started on: 1 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 311; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Average daily power: 529MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Feb7 Feb

Play back 8 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

1 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb 7 Feb

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (59 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

Galvarino

4,459 ha

7.8 %
Temuco where it started

1,381 ha

3.0 %
Lautaro

112 ha

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Jan 2019

After · 14 Feb 2019

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 · 0Every 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 Chile ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Temuco fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 1 February 2019 and 7 February 2019: 7 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 5,942 hectares (59.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Galvarino (4,459 ha, 7.8 %); Temuco (1,381 ha, 3.0 %); Lautaro (112 ha, 0.1 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Chile (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: 130 (CONAF) · 132 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

CONAF · Corporación Nacional Forestal ↗
SENAPRED ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 130 (CONAF) · 132.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 ADM3 (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.

Where it burned