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Concepción fire, October 2019 Concepción

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2019, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2019 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,046 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 217th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 57 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Burnt area
10,046ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
9 Oct 2019 – 25 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Oct
2019
Heat detections
401
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
6
Low · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

26 Oct 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct25 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

910121314151617182021242526

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
50km/h · peak gust
42%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.3 mm on 31 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Concepción 93,392 inhabitants where it started
    10,095 ha
    0.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

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)
9 Oct 34.8 °C 47 % 25 km/h 0.3 mm Low 6
10 Oct 34.3 °C 46 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm Low 9
11 Oct 32.4 °C 58 % 45 km/h 6.8 mm Very low 1
12 Oct 34.1 °C 47 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
13 Oct 34.5 °C 43 % 48 km/h 0.4 mm Low 11
14 Oct 34.8 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm Low 10
15 Oct 30.3 °C 58 % 31 km/h 0.5 mm Low 9
16 Oct 29.4 °C 53 % 31 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 2
17 Oct 33.6 °C 49 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
18 Oct 33.1 °C 46 % 27 km/h 1.0 mm Low 7
19 Oct 29.7 °C 56 % 37 km/h 1.7 mm Very low 4
20 Oct 33.8 °C 52 % 35 km/h 0.5 mm Low 9
21 Oct 30.8 °C 63 % 32 km/h 15.9 mm Very low 0
22 Oct 30.6 °C 57 % 24 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 1
23 Oct 33.9 °C 53 % 20 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 4
24 Oct 33.5 °C 49 % 22 km/h 1.0 mm Low 6
25 Oct 35.5 °C 48 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
26 Oct after 34.2 °C 50 % 31 km/h 2.6 mm Very low 3
27 Oct after 34.2 °C 50 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
28 Oct after 35.2 °C 47 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
29 Oct after 35.9 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
30 Oct after 36.6 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
31 Oct after 33.4 °C 48 % 30 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Oct 2019
After · 1 Nov 2019

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 · 401Every 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 Concepción fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2019 and 25 October 2019: 17 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,046 hectares (100.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Concepción (10,095 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 42 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.