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Villa Corzo fire, 11 April 2019 Villa Corzo, Villaflores

Out · last detection 22 Apr 2019, 19:48 UTC

The fire started on 11 April 2019 in Villa Corzo, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,421 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 51th largest in Chiapas since 2016 (of 267 with a page). Number 116 in Mexico in 2019, of 364.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Villa Corzo · 2016Villa Corzo · 2019

Burnt area
3,421ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
11 Apr 2019 – 22 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
11 Apr
2019
Heat detections
171
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
82MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Apr22 Apr
22 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

11 Apr 2019 · 20 MW · 2 12 Apr 2019 · 267 MW · 21 13 Apr 2019 · 221 MW · 37 14 Apr 2019 · 90 MW · 18 15 Apr 2019 · 186 MW · 29 16 Apr 2019 · 79 MW · 31 17 Apr 2019 · 21 MW · 2 18 Apr 2019 · 20 MW · 7 19 Apr 2019 · 3 MW · 3 20 Apr 2019 · 60 MW · 12 21 Apr 2019 · 6 MW · 2 22 Apr 2019 · 16 MW · 7
11 Apr 12 Apr 13 Apr 15 Apr 17 Apr 19 Apr 21 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

35°high
61km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,220 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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. Villa Corzo where it started
    3,116 ha reached on 11 Apr
    1.1 %
  2. Villaflores
    327 ha reached on 15 Apr
    0.2 %

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 area3.7 ha
Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.7 hectares of built-up land and about 200 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)
11 Apr 33.9 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Apr 33.1 °C 21 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Apr 32.7 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Apr 33.3 °C 27 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Apr 32.3 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Apr 33.8 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Apr 32.6 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
18 Apr 33.5 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Apr 28.6 °C 37 % 61 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 43
20 Apr 33.1 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Apr 34.6 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Apr 34.4 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
23 Apr after 34.8 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Apr after 34.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Apr after 31.7 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Apr after 32.3 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.5 mm High 37
27 Apr after 32.2 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
28 Apr after 34.2 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Apr after 35.6 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Apr after 33.9 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 May after 33.1 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 37
2 May after 31.5 °C 51 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Apr 2019
After · 29 Apr 2019

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 · 171Every 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 Villa Corzo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 April 2019 and 22 April 2019: 12 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 3,421 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Villa Corzo (3,116 ha, 1.1 %); Villaflores (327 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

Report an error
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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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 171 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.