How long did the Zirándaro fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 May 2017 to 24 May 2017 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 May 2017 to 22 May 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,225 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga (2,533 ha, 1.0 %); Zirándaro (1,717 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2017-05-07 → 2017-05-24

Zirándaro fire, May 2017 Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga, Zirándaro

Out · last detection 24 May 2017, 19:36 UTC

The fire started on 7 May 2017 in Zirándaro, Mexico, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,225 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 137th largest in Guerrero since 2016 (of 612 with a page). Number 91 in Mexico in 2017, of 374.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga · 2016 Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga · 2019 Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga · 2022 Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga · 2024

Burnt area: 4,225ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 7 May 2017 – 24 May 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 7 May; 2017
Heat detections: 179; in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 53MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 May24 May

Play back 24 May 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 May 10 May 13 May 16 May 19 May 20 May 22 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

33°high

61km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 29 May.

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 523 ha in 2016.

193 ha Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga fire, May 2016 7,594 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga

2,533 ha reached on 8 May

1.0 %
Zirándaro where it started

1,717 ha reached on 7 May

0.8 %

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)
7 May	31.4 °C	17 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
8 May	30.3 °C	26 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 May	30.4 °C	24 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 May	31.4 °C	27 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
11 May	31.5 °C	28 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
12 May	30.0 °C	27 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
13 May	31.2 °C	24 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 May	31.3 °C	26 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 May	32.7 °C	27 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 May	33.1 °C	23 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 May	30.9 °C	31 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
18 May	32.3 °C	26 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 May	31.3 °C	27 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
20 May	30.2 °C	29 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
21 May	31.5 °C	27 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
22 May	31.6 °C	36 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
23 May	32.0 °C	31 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
24 May	31.4 °C	32 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 May after	31.6 °C	25 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
26 May after	31.7 °C	29 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 May after	30.7 °C	33 %	55 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
28 May after	30.3 °C	31 %	56 km/h	0.6 mm	High 37
29 May after	29.1 °C	40 %	52 km/h	1.6 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Apr 2017

After · 31 May 2017

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 · 179Every 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 Zirándaro fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 May 2017 to 24 May 2017 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 May 2017 to 22 May 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,225 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Coahuayutla de José María Izazaga (2,533 ha, 1.0 %); Zirándaro (1,717 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 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: 22 May 2017 → 24 May 2017.

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 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 7 May 2017 to 22 May 2017. 179 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.

Where it burned