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Cabezas fire, 23 September 2020 Cabezas

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2020, 17:00 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2020 in Cabezas, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,612 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 120th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 837 with a page). Number 28 in Bolivia in 2020, of 211.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cabezas · 2022Samaipata · 2017Cabezas · 2020Samaipata · 2020

Burnt area
17,612ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
23 Sept 2020 – 20 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
23 Sept
2020
Heat detections
1,536
in a single hotspot: 284 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
827MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept20 Oct
20 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2020 · 80 MW · 7 25 Sept 2020 · 27 MW · 4 26 Sept 2020 · 53 MW · 8 28 Sept 2020 · 7 MW · 2 29 Sept 2020 · 473 MW · 15 30 Sept 2020 · 2,784 MW · 116 1 Oct 2020 · 4,899 MW · 274 2 Oct 2020 · 4,951 MW · 292 3 Oct 2020 · 1,559 MW · 175 4 Oct 2020 · 1,745 MW · 147 5 Oct 2020 · 680 MW · 60 6 Oct 2020 · 240 MW · 48 7 Oct 2020 · 912 MW · 82 8 Oct 2020 · 679 MW · 72 9 Oct 2020 · 444 MW · 55 10 Oct 2020 · 461 MW · 46 11 Oct 2020 · 128 MW · 64 12 Oct 2020 · 39 MW · 9 13 Oct 2020 · 77 MW · 9 14 Oct 2020 · 161 MW · 10 15 Oct 2020 · 10 MW · 6 17 Oct 2020 · 12 MW · 4 18 Oct 2020 · 153 MW · 15 19 Oct 2020 · 50 MW · 13 20 Oct 2020 · 39 MW · 3
23 Sept 29 Sept 2 Oct 3 Oct 7 Oct 11 Oct 15 Oct 20 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
80km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.3 mm on 21 Oct.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,953 ha in 2016, 877 ha in 2017, 599 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,973 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (176 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. Cabezas 32,961 inhabitants where it started
    17,705 ha reached on 23 Sept
    3.5 %

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 area2.3 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
23 Sept 33.4 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Sept 35.7 °C 28 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Sept 36.8 °C 26 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Sept 34.7 °C 34 % 78 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Sept 34.4 °C 32 % 58 km/h 0.9 mm High 29
28 Sept 27.6 °C 26 % 37 km/h 11.1 mm Very low 3
29 Sept 33.2 °C 33 % 73 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
30 Sept 34.9 °C 31 % 80 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct 36.5 °C 25 % 79 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Oct 36.4 °C 27 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Oct 36.3 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Oct 33.4 °C 29 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Oct 33.2 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Oct 35.3 °C 27 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Oct 36.7 °C 27 % 68 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
8 Oct 36.1 °C 30 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Oct 37.5 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Oct 36.5 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
11 Oct 36.5 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
12 Oct 35.1 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
13 Oct 35.2 °C 31 % 44 km/h 1.6 mm High 24
14 Oct 36.2 °C 29 % 67 km/h 1.8 mm High 34
15 Oct 29.4 °C 43 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Oct 26.6 °C 61 % 36 km/h 3.9 mm Very low 4
17 Oct 33.9 °C 28 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Oct 36.4 °C 24 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Oct 35.3 °C 33 % 54 km/h 1.5 mm High 27
20 Oct 34.3 °C 38 % 47 km/h 0.9 mm High 23
21 Oct after 30.6 °C 49 % 35 km/h 15.3 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2020
After · 27 Oct 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 · 1,536Every 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 Cabezas fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2020 to 20 October 2020 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 September 2020 to 14 October 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,612 hectares (176.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cabezas (17,705 ha, 3.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 80 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 September 2020 to 14 October 2020. 1,536 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.