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Tuzantla fire, April 2021 Tuzantla, Tiquicheo de Nicolás Romero, Luvianos

Out · last detection 23 Apr 2021, 19:23 UTC

The fire started on 12 April 2021 in Tuzantla, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,758 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 71th largest in Michoacan de Ocampo since 2016 (of 111 with a page). Number 242 in Mexico in 2021, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luvianos · 2026Tejupilco · 2024Tejupilco · 2024Cutzamala de Pinzón · 2020

Burnt area
1,758ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
12 Apr 2021 – 23 Apr 2021
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
12 Apr
2021
Heat detections
79
in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
44MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Apr23 Apr
23 Apr 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Apr 2021 · 24 MW · 1 13 Apr 2021 · 1 MW · 1 15 Apr 2021 · 26 MW · 2 16 Apr 2021 · 26 MW · 6 17 Apr 2021 · 2 MW · 2 18 Apr 2021 · 17 MW · 6 19 Apr 2021 · 107 MW · 20 20 Apr 2021 · 128 MW · 15 21 Apr 2021 · 79 MW · 11 22 Apr 2021 · 71 MW · 13 23 Apr 2021 · 8 MW · 2
12 Apr 15 Apr 17 Apr 19 Apr 20 Apr 21 Apr 23 Apr

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
46km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (18 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. Tuzantla where it started
    1,626 ha reached on 15 Apr
    1.6 %
  2. Tiquicheo de Nicolás Romero
    106 ha reached on 12 Apr
    0.1 %
  3. Luvianos
    33 ha
    0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
15 Apr 38.6 °C 7 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Apr 38.0 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
17 Apr 37.4 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Apr 36.4 °C 8 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Apr 35.9 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Apr 36.2 °C 8 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Apr 37.6 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Apr 36.2 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Apr 35.8 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Apr after 36.0 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Apr after 38.1 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Apr after 37.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Apr after 38.2 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Apr after 37.3 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Apr after 35.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Apr after 36.1 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 May after 35.6 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 May after 34.9 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 May after 35.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Apr 2021
After · 30 Apr 2021

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 · 79Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tuzantla fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 April 2021 to 23 April 2021 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 April 2021 to 23 April 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 1,758 hectares (17.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Tuzantla (1,626 ha, 1.6 %); Tiquicheo de Nicolás Romero (106 ha, 0.1 %); Luvianos (33 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Mexico (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 ›

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: 15 April 2021 → 12 April 2021.

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 911.

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 15 April 2021 to 23 April 2021. 79 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 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)). 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.