How long did the Victoria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2020 to 10 October 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2020 to 3 October 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,832 hectares (108.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Victoria (10,863 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.

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.

AR · Argentina · 2020-09-17 → 2020-10-10

Victoria fire, 17 September 2020 Victoria

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2020, 18:24 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2020 in Victoria, Argentina, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,832 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 14th largest in Buenos Aires since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 32 in Argentina in 2020, of 671.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Victoria · 2020 Victoria · 2022 Victoria · 2020 Victoria · 2020

Burnt area: 10,832ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 24days; 17 Sept 2020 – 10 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; departments
Started on: 17 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 780; in a single hotspot: 250 MW
Danger at start: 19; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 742MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept10 Oct

Play back 10 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 1 Oct 5 Oct 10 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

33°high

63km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 41.7 mm on 20 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 150 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.8% of the area of London (108 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

Victoria where it started

10,863 ha reached on 17 Sept

1.6 %

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 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)
17 Sept	28.5 °C	20 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
18 Sept	25.4 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
19 Sept	18.4 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
20 Sept	20.5 °C	18 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
21 Sept	22.4 °C	20 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
22 Sept	24.9 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
23 Sept	27.9 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
24 Sept	30.0 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
25 Sept	30.5 °C	36 %	44 km/h	0.6 mm	High 22
26 Sept	24.4 °C	63 %	52 km/h	9.0 mm	Very low 2
27 Sept	18.7 °C	56 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
28 Sept	25.0 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 11
29 Sept	28.9 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
30 Sept	33.4 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
1 Oct	22.7 °C	22 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
2 Oct	19.7 °C	39 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
3 Oct	16.4 °C	35 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
4 Oct	12.1 °C	66 %	34 km/h	1.5 mm	Very low 4
5 Oct	18.4 °C	42 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
6 Oct	23.7 °C	32 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
7 Oct	28.2 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
8 Oct	27.1 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
9 Oct	27.7 °C	18 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Oct	28.5 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
11 Oct after	24.9 °C	29 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Oct after	25.1 °C	30 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Oct after	28.5 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Oct after	28.7 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
15 Oct after	28.9 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
16 Oct after	31.0 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Oct after	32.4 °C	38 %	39 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
18 Oct after	37.7 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Oct after	34.2 °C	39 %	60 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 41
20 Oct after	16.9 °C	63 %	57 km/h	41.7 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Sept 2020

After · 17 Oct 2020

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 · 780Every 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 Argentina ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Victoria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 September 2020 to 10 October 2020 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2020 to 3 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,832 hectares (108.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Victoria (10,863 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.4 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class High.
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 ›

Servicio Nacional de Manejo del Fuego ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 3 October 2020 → 10 October 2020.

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 911 · 100.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 September 2020 to 3 October 2020. 780 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.

Where it burned