How long did the Villa Corzo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 April 2019 to 25 April 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 April 2019 to 24 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,722 hectares (87.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Villa Corzo (7,891 ha, 2.8 %); Villaflores (884 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 79 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.

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.

MX · Mexico · 2019-04-04 → 2019-04-25

Villa Corzo fire, 4 April 2019 Villa Corzo, Villaflores

Out · last detection 25 Apr 2019, 18:51 UTC

The fire started on 4 April 2019 in Villa Corzo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,722 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 29 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villaflores · 2016 Villa Corzo · 2016 Villa Corzo · 2019 Villa Corzo · 2023

Burnt area: 8,722ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 4 Apr 2019 – 25 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 4 Apr; 2019
Heat detections: 484; in a single hotspot: 69 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 130MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Apr25 Apr

Play back 25 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Apr 7 Apr 11 Apr 14 Apr 17 Apr 18 Apr 20 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

34°high

79km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 2 May.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 103 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (87 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

Villa Corzo where it started

7,891 ha reached on 4 Apr

2.8 %
Villaflores

884 ha reached on 11 Apr

0.5 %

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 area5.2 ha

Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.2 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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)
4 Apr	31.8 °C	41 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Apr	30.9 °C	44 %	35 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
6 Apr	30.7 °C	48 %	42 km/h	0.5 mm	High 27
7 Apr	32.1 °C	42 %	46 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
8 Apr	31.3 °C	48 %	33 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 20
9 Apr	29.7 °C	52 %	48 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
10 Apr	33.7 °C	24 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
11 Apr	32.7 °C	36 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Apr	31.9 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Apr	31.4 °C	29 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
14 Apr	32.3 °C	33 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
15 Apr	30.4 °C	43 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Apr	32.9 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Apr	31.2 °C	48 %	38 km/h	0.4 mm	High 28
18 Apr	31.7 °C	45 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
19 Apr	26.9 °C	46 %	79 km/h	0.4 mm	Very high 40
20 Apr	30.8 °C	35 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Apr	33.7 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Apr	33.3 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Apr	33.6 °C	33 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Apr	33.3 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
25 Apr	30.9 °C	48 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
26 Apr after	30.5 °C	50 %	57 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
27 Apr after	30.8 °C	49 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	High 26
28 Apr after	33.2 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Apr after	35.2 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
30 Apr after	32.8 °C	34 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
1 May after	31.8 °C	40 %	29 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
2 May after	30.7 °C	59 %	38 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Mar 2019

After · 2 May 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 · 484Every 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 Mexico ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Villa Corzo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 April 2019 to 25 April 2019 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 April 2019 to 24 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,722 hectares (87.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Villa Corzo (7,891 ha, 2.8 %); Villaflores (884 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.7 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 79 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
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 ›

CONAFOR · Comisión Nacional Forestal ↗
CENAPRED ↗

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

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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 really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 4 April 2019 to 24 April 2019. 484 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.

Where it burned