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Baures fire, 27 October 2023 Baures

Out · last detection 21 Nov 2023, 18:11 UTC

The fire started on 27 October 2023 in Baures, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,456 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 139th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 903 with a page). Number 48 in Bolivia in 2023, of 248.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baures · 2020Baures · 2016Baures · 2022Baures · 2025

Burnt area
10,456ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
27 Oct 2023 – 21 Nov 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Oct
2023
Heat detections
522
in a single hotspot: 122 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
237MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Oct21 Nov
21 Nov 2023

How it evolved, day by day

27 Oct 2023 · 20 MW · 3 29 Oct 2023 · 286 MW · 18 30 Oct 2023 · 327 MW · 27 31 Oct 2023 · 143 MW · 14 2 Nov 2023 · 253 MW · 17 3 Nov 2023 · 206 MW · 42 5 Nov 2023 · 377 MW · 29 6 Nov 2023 · 184 MW · 27 7 Nov 2023 · 26 MW · 16 8 Nov 2023 · 228 MW · 21 9 Nov 2023 · 176 MW · 46 10 Nov 2023 · 124 MW · 16 11 Nov 2023 · 720 MW · 26 12 Nov 2023 · 1,113 MW · 88 13 Nov 2023 · 132 MW · 14 15 Nov 2023 · 153 MW · 24 16 Nov 2023 · 155 MW · 29 17 Nov 2023 · 242 MW · 38 18 Nov 2023 · 11 MW · 5 19 Nov 2023 · 80 MW · 17 21 Nov 2023 · 12 MW · 5
27 Oct 31 Oct 5 Nov 8 Nov 11 Nov 12 Nov 15 Nov 18 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
50km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 22 Nov.

This area had burned before

85% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,500 ha in 2016, 7,908 ha in 2020, 1,286 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,856 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.6% of the area of London (105 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
    10,507 ha reached on 27 Oct
    0.6 %

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)
27 Oct 37.0 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 18
28 Oct 34.1 °C 50 % 49 km/h 2.8 mm Low 6
29 Oct 37.7 °C 36 % 44 km/h 2.4 mm Moderate 12
30 Oct 34.5 °C 46 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
31 Oct 31.4 °C 50 % 23 km/h 1.3 mm Low 8
1 Nov 35.2 °C 39 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
2 Nov 36.7 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
3 Nov 38.1 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
4 Nov 32.6 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Nov 36.3 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Nov 38.0 °C 33 % 14 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
7 Nov 40.0 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm High 25
8 Nov 38.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
9 Nov 37.2 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
10 Nov 35.2 °C 45 % 25 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
11 Nov 37.2 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
12 Nov 36.3 °C 42 % 38 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 15
13 Nov 36.6 °C 41 % 36 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 13
14 Nov 37.2 °C 39 % 34 km/h 3.3 mm Low 9
15 Nov 37.3 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
16 Nov 37.8 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Nov 38.9 °C 32 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Nov 37.9 °C 34 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Nov 37.5 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.2 mm High 26
20 Nov 28.8 °C 60 % 23 km/h 19.1 mm Very low 1
21 Nov 28.2 °C 75 % 30 km/h 7.3 mm Very low 0
22 Nov after 33.7 °C 47 % 32 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Oct 2023
After · 28 Nov 2023

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 21 November 2023 the air beside the fire reached 518 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 183: 12 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak518 µg/m³
Days over the guideline24 days
PM10738 µg/m³
Optical depth4.58
31123456789101112131415161718192021222324
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 · 522Every 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 27 October 2023 to 21 November 2023 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 November 2023 to 21 November 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,456 hectares (104.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Baures (10,507 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 2 November 2023 to 21 November 2023. 522 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 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.