How long did the Wampusirpi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 May 2024 to 28 May 2024 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 May 2024 to 26 May 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,493 hectares (34.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Wampusirpi (3,509 ha, 2.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 43 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 Honduras (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

HN · Honduras · 2024-05-07 → 2024-05-28

Wampusirpi fire, 7 May 2024 Wampusirpi

Out · last detection 28 May 2024, 06:27 UTC

The fire started on 7 May 2024 in Wampusirpi, Honduras, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,493 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Gracias a Dios since 2016 (of 169 with a page). Number 4 in Honduras in 2024, of 94.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wampusirpi · 2020 Wampusirpi · 2023 Dulce Nombre de Culmí · 2024 Dulce Nombre de Culmí · 2024

Burnt area: 3,493ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 7 May 2024 – 28 May 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 7 May; 2024
Heat detections: 142; in a single hotspot: 64 MW
Danger at start: 15; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 54MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 May28 May

Play back 28 May 2024

How it evolved, day by day

7 May 12 May 15 May 19 May 20 May 22 May 26 May

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

43km/h · peak gust

36%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.4 mm on 29 May.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,455 ha in 2020, 1,052 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,627 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Wampusirpi 5,829 inhabitants where it started

3,509 ha reached on 7 May

2.0 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
7 May	35.5 °C	53 %	31 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 15
8 May	35.7 °C	50 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 19
9 May	36.2 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 19
10 May	35.9 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 19
11 May	37.4 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
12 May	36.6 °C	43 %	36 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
13 May	36.7 °C	44 %	35 km/h	0.6 mm	High 23
14 May	36.0 °C	44 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
15 May	35.8 °C	48 %	33 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
16 May	34.2 °C	56 %	36 km/h	2.1 mm	Low 10
17 May	35.6 °C	54 %	38 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 12
18 May	37.6 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.8 mm	High 25
19 May	36.8 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 25
20 May	35.7 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 May	35.6 °C	52 %	37 km/h	2.4 mm	Low 11
22 May	37.4 °C	36 %	42 km/h	0.3 mm	High 28
23 May	36.5 °C	44 %	31 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 21
24 May	36.4 °C	44 %	26 km/h	0.5 mm	High 24
25 May	37.6 °C	38 %	32 km/h	0.3 mm	High 29
26 May	37.2 °C	39 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
27 May	38.2 °C	40 %	42 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
28 May	36.8 °C	45 %	43 km/h	2.1 mm	Moderate 18
29 May after	34.0 °C	52 %	42 km/h	13.4 mm	Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Apr 2024

After · 4 Jun 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 29 May 2024 the air beside the fire reached 76 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak76 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10108 µg/m³

Optical depth1.29

WHO 15

567891011121314151617181920212223242526272829

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 142Every 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 Honduras ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Wampusirpi fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 May 2024 to 28 May 2024 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 May 2024 to 26 May 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,493 hectares (34.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Wampusirpi (3,509 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 43 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 Honduras (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 ›

ICF · Instituto de Conservación Forestal ↗
COPECO ↗

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: 26 May 2024 → 28 May 2024.

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?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 May 2024 to 26 May 2024. 142 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 2025, 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 International (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