How long did the Concepción fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 September 2020 and 14 October 2020: 22 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 3,695 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concepción (3,476 ha, 0.1 %); San Ignacio (242 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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.

BO · Bolivia · 2020-09-23 → 2020-10-14

Concepción fire, 23 September 2020 Concepción, San Ignacio

Out · last detection 14 Oct 2020, 17:14 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2020 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,695 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 621th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 156 in Bolivia in 2020, of 211.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Concepción · 2019 Concepción · 2019 Concepción · 2020 San Ignacio · 2022

Burnt area: 3,695ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 23 Sept 2020 – 14 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 23 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 185; in a single hotspot: 57 MW
Danger at start: 25; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 65MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 14 Oct 2020

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept14 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 26 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 2 Oct 7 Oct 10 Oct 13 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

40°high

54km/h · peak gust

25%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 15 Oct.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 60 ha in 2017, 581 ha in 2018, 153 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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

Concepción 93,392 inhabitants where it started

3,476 ha

0.1 %
San Ignacio 56,702 inhabitants

242 ha

0.0 %

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)
23 Sept	35.3 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 Sept	37.1 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
25 Sept	37.4 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Sept	35.3 °C	38 %	54 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 39
27 Sept	36.3 °C	39 %	54 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
28 Sept	31.8 °C	48 %	34 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 17
29 Sept	36.5 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
30 Sept	37.2 °C	35 %	47 km/h	0.2 mm	High 35
1 Oct	37.6 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Oct	38.2 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Oct	36.9 °C	34 %	23 km/h	0.8 mm	High 27
4 Oct	37.8 °C	35 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Oct	38.1 °C	35 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
6 Oct	35.9 °C	43 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Oct	37.9 °C	32 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Oct	40.2 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
9 Oct	38.6 °C	28 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
10 Oct	38.7 °C	29 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
11 Oct	36.2 °C	36 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Oct	35.9 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Oct	37.2 °C	36 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Oct	37.4 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 38
15 Oct after	33.9 °C	43 %	30 km/h	5.7 mm	Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Sept 2020

After · 21 Oct 2020

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.

Detections table · 185Every 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 Concepción fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 23 September 2020 and 14 October 2020: 22 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 3,695 hectares (37.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concepción (3,476 ha, 0.1 %); San Ignacio (242 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 185 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.

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