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Utracán fire, 27 January 2018 Utracán, Lihuel Calel

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2018, 19:00 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2018 in Utracán, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 71,910 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 2th largest in La Pampa since 2016 (of 190 with a page). The largest in Argentina in 2018, of 179.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Utracán · 2017Utracán · 2022Lihuel Calel · 2018Utracán · 2018

Burnt area
71,910ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
27 Jan 2018 – 5 Feb 2018
Municipalities hit
2
departments
Started on
27 Jan
2018
Heat detections
2,850
in a single hotspot: 526 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
8.0GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan5 Feb
5 Feb 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jan 2018 · 5,377 MW · 61 28 Jan 2018 · 17,788 MW · 845 29 Jan 2018 · 3,266 MW · 268 30 Jan 2018 · 22,746 MW · 746 31 Jan 2018 · 12,395 MW · 788 1 Feb 2018 · 2,474 MW · 133 2 Feb 2018 · 2 MW · 1 5 Feb 2018 · 59 MW · 8
27 Jan 29 Jan 30 Jan 31 Jan 2 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
62km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.9 mm on 6 Feb.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 10 ha in 2016, 1,170 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 45% of the area of London (719 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. Utracán where it started
    65,336 ha reached on 27 Jan
    5.1 %
  2. Lihuel Calel
    6,867 ha reached on 29 Jan
    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 2020
Built-up area3.5 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.5 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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 Jan 27.6 °C 18 % 49 km/h 2.6 mm High 26
28 Jan 32.4 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Jan 34.6 °C 25 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
30 Jan 32.0 °C 16 % 57 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 64
31 Jan 30.0 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Feb 35.9 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Feb 36.2 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Feb 35.6 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Feb 37.1 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.9 mm Very high 44
5 Feb 39.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
6 Feb after 37.6 °C 26 % 56 km/h 2.9 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jan 2018
After · 12 Feb 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 · 2,850Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Utracán fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 January 2018 to 5 February 2018 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2018 to 1 February 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 71,910 hectares (719.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Utracán (65,336 ha, 5.1 %); Lihuel Calel (6,867 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Argentina (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 · 100 · 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. Last day with fire: 1 February 2018 → 5 February 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 911 · 100.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 9 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 January 2018 to 1 February 2018. 2,850 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.