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PY · Paraguay · –

Villa Hayes fire, 27 July 2017 Villa Hayes

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2017, 04:18 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2017 in Villa Hayes, Paraguay, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,737 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 560th largest in PRESIDENTE HAYES since 2016 (of 709 with a page). Number 199 in Paraguay in 2017, of 261.

Burnt area
1,737ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
27 Jul 2017 – 30 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Jul
2017
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
260MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul30 Jul
30 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 2017 · 218 MW · 10 28 Jul 2017 · 735 MW · 23 29 Jul 2017 · 80 MW · 10 30 Jul 2017 · 6 MW · 2
27 Jul 28 Jul 29 Jul 30 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
42km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 2 Aug.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.1% of the area of London (17 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 Hayes where it started
    1,733 ha reached on 27 Jul
    0.1 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 Jul 31.8 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Jul 31.7 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Jul 32.3 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul 32.2 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
31 Jul after 30.7 °C 32 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
1 Aug after 30.3 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug after 25.8 °C 41 % 50 km/h 4.9 mm Low 6

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 33.9, a minimum humidity of 30% and 10 days without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 45.

FWI at the start 33.9
Minimum humidity 30 %
Days without rain 10
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

Villa Hayes fire, August 2017
1,830 ha 4 days FWI 34.7 Min. humidity 30 % 23 km away, in 2017

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.

What happened to them

5 days
median duration
2,267 ha
median area
100 %
went past 1,000 ha
5.2 mm
rain at the end (median; 35 of 45 had it)

It burned an area similar to its twins (1,737 ha against a median of 2,267 ha) and lasted 4 days, against 5 days.

In 10 of 45, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.2 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

4.9 mmfirst rain
2 Aug3 days after it ended
42km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 30 Jul, and on 2 Aug 4.9 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 35 of 45, with a median of 5.2 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Jul 2017
After · 6 Aug 2017

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 · 45Every 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 Paraguay

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Villa Hayes fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 July 2017 and 30 July 2017: 4 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 1,737 hectares (17.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Villa Hayes (1,733 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Paraguay (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 45. Their median duration was 5 days and their median area 2,267 ha; 100 % went past 1,000 ha. In 10 of 45, not even 1 mm fell in the ten days after the end: they went out without rain. In the rest, the first rainy day brought a median of 5.2 mm.

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: 132 · 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.

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 132 · 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. 45 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 2015, 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.