How long did the Baures fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2024 to 16 October 2024 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2024 to 16 October 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,787 hectares (177.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Baures (17,922 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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.

BO · Bolivia · 2024-09-19 → 2024-10-16

Baures fire, 19 September 2024 Baures

Out · last detection 16 Oct 2024, 05:49 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2024 in Baures, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,787 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 64th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 903 with a page). Number 44 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baures · 2020 Baures · 2016 Baures · 2024 Baures · 2020

Burnt area: 17,787ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 28days; 19 Sept 2024 – 16 Oct 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 19 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 884; in a single hotspot: 384 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 565MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept16 Oct

Play back 16 Oct 2024

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 24 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 6 Oct 10 Oct 14 Oct

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

44km/h · peak gust

34%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2016, 46 ha in 2017, 272 ha in 2020, 166 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 441 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (178 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

Baures 7,488 inhabitants where it started

17,922 ha reached on 19 Sept

1.0 %

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)
19 Sept	36.7 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
20 Sept	37.4 °C	37 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Sept	36.5 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Sept	37.7 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
23 Sept	37.3 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Sept	36.8 °C	39 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
25 Sept	37.6 °C	39 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
26 Sept	35.6 °C	42 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
27 Sept	30.1 °C	46 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 31
28 Sept	34.5 °C	38 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
29 Sept	36.6 °C	36 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Sept	34.9 °C	49 %	35 km/h	4.8 mm	Low 8
1 Oct	36.6 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
2 Oct	36.8 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Oct	32.4 °C	47 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
4 Oct	32.7 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
5 Oct	36.7 °C	35 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Oct	37.7 °C	37 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Oct	34.9 °C	45 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
8 Oct	36.8 °C	40 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
9 Oct	36.6 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
10 Oct	35.1 °C	46 %	42 km/h	2.5 mm	Moderate 14
11 Oct	34.1 °C	48 %	40 km/h	3.4 mm	Low 8
12 Oct	37.4 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
13 Oct	37.8 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
14 Oct	32.8 °C	54 %	15 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
15 Oct	36.4 °C	41 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
16 Oct	33.5 °C	50 %	31 km/h	5.0 mm	Low 6
17 Oct after	32.4 °C	57 %	34 km/h	6.2 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Sept 2024

After · 23 Oct 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 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 339 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 212: 14 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak339 µg/m³

Days over the guideline33 days

PM10484 µg/m³

Optical depth10.50

WHO 15

171819202122232425262728293012345678910111213141516171819

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 · 884Every 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 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 19 September 2024 to 16 October 2024 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2024 to 16 October 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,787 hectares (177.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Baures (17,922 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.8 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 ›

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

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 Start date: 25 September 2024 → 19 September 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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 25 September 2024 to 16 October 2024. 884 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.

Where it burned