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Baures fire, 26 August 2024 Baures

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2024, 05:25 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2024 in Baures, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,581 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 297th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 903 with a page). Number 122 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baures · 2023

Burnt area
6,581ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
26 Aug 2024 – 10 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
26 Aug
2024
Heat detections
340
in a single hotspot: 270 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
416MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug10 Sept
10 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2024 · 3 MW · 1 30 Aug 2024 · 23 MW · 8 31 Aug 2024 · 25 MW · 5 1 Sept 2024 · 211 MW · 12 2 Sept 2024 · 309 MW · 39 3 Sept 2024 · 12 MW · 3 4 Sept 2024 · 522 MW · 71 5 Sept 2024 · 3,636 MW · 143 6 Sept 2024 · 220 MW · 54 7 Sept 2024 · 29 MW · 2 8 Sept 2024 · 2 MW · 1 10 Sept 2024 · 1 MW · 1
29 Aug 31 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 8 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

38°high
46km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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
    6,621 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.4 %

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 Aug 31.7 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
28 Aug 34.4 °C 27 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
29 Aug 37.2 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Aug 35.5 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Aug 35.8 °C 31 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Sept 33.2 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 35.0 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Sept 36.3 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Sept 35.9 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Sept 30.1 °C 39 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept 32.9 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 36.0 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 36.5 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Sept 37.7 °C 29 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Sept 37.1 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Sept after 36.5 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Sept after 34.9 °C 49 % 34 km/h 0.7 mm High 23
13 Sept after 37.1 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept after 35.1 °C 41 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm High 32
15 Sept after 30.2 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Sept after 30.4 °C 46 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
17 Sept after 34.7 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Sept after 36.0 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
19 Sept after 37.0 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Sept after 38.1 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 19 Aug 2024
After · 17 Sept 2024

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 7 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 695 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 371: 25 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak695 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10991 µg/m³
Optical depth6.67
272829303112345678910111213
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 · 340Every 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 26 August 2024 to 10 September 2024 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2024 to 10 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,581 hectares (65.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Baures (6,621 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very 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 29 August 2024 to 10 September 2024. 340 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.