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Baures fire, 5 September 2020 Baures, Huacaraje

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2020, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2020 in Baures, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,029 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 339th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 903 with a page). Number 94 in Bolivia in 2020, of 211.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baures · 2016Huacaraje · 2022Magdalena · 2022

Burnt area
6,029ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
5 Sept 2020 – 10 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2020
Heat detections
205
in a single hotspot: 184 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
793MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept10 Sept
10 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2020 · 1,053 MW · 93 8 Sept 2020 · 598 MW · 52 9 Sept 2020 · 1,493 MW · 54 10 Sept 2020 · 29 MW · 6
7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
32km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,017 ha in 2016, 543 ha in 2017, 449 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,595 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (60 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. Baures 7,488 inhabitants where it started
    6,038 ha reached on 7 Sept
    0.3 %
  2. Huacaraje 4,630 inhabitants
    26 ha
    0.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.32 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.32 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
7 Sept 32.5 °C 43 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept 33.6 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 36.9 °C 32 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Sept 36.7 °C 34 % 15 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
11 Sept after 36.6 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept after 35.4 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
13 Sept after 36.0 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
14 Sept after 34.7 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Sept after 31.3 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Sept after 34.9 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
17 Sept after 34.5 °C 42 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Sept after 33.9 °C 47 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
19 Sept after 35.0 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Sept after 30.9 °C 53 % 39 km/h 3.3 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2020
After · 17 Sept 2020

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 · 205Every 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 Bolivia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Baures fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2020 to 10 September 2020 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2020 to 10 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,029 hectares (60.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Baures (6,038 ha, 0.3 %); Huacaraje (26 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 32 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 Bolivia (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: 119 · 110 · 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
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 119 · 110.

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 September 2020 to 10 September 2020. 205 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 ADM3 (Public Domain). 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.