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Concepción fire, 13 September 2021 Concepción

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2021, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2021 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 58,499 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 835 with a page). Number 6 in Bolivia in 2021, of 155.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Concepción · 2020Concepción · 2023Concepción · 2023Concepción · 2023

Burnt area
58,499ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
13 Sept 2021 – 15 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Sept
2021
Heat detections
3,088
in a single hotspot: 256 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
936MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept15 Oct
15 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 2021 · 130 MW · 10 14 Sept 2021 · 64 MW · 8 15 Sept 2021 · 18 MW · 4 17 Sept 2021 · 931 MW · 26 18 Sept 2021 · 1,334 MW · 71 19 Sept 2021 · 166 MW · 37 20 Sept 2021 · 556 MW · 52 21 Sept 2021 · 31 MW · 4 22 Sept 2021 · 412 MW · 32 23 Sept 2021 · 2,301 MW · 197 24 Sept 2021 · 3,122 MW · 357 25 Sept 2021 · 591 MW · 75 26 Sept 2021 · 3,205 MW · 174 27 Sept 2021 · 1,685 MW · 159 28 Sept 2021 · 521 MW · 127 29 Sept 2021 · 2,676 MW · 227 30 Sept 2021 · 767 MW · 120 1 Oct 2021 · 2,993 MW · 203 2 Oct 2021 · 1,470 MW · 134 3 Oct 2021 · 980 MW · 160 4 Oct 2021 · 539 MW · 98 5 Oct 2021 · 660 MW · 193 6 Oct 2021 · 133 MW · 16 8 Oct 2021 · 407 MW · 44 9 Oct 2021 · 777 MW · 179 10 Oct 2021 · 1,588 MW · 212 11 Oct 2021 · 98 MW · 24 12 Oct 2021 · 13 MW · 3 13 Oct 2021 · 15 MW · 2 14 Oct 2021 · 48 MW · 14 15 Oct 2021 · 768 MW · 126
13 Sept 19 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 4 Oct 10 Oct 15 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

37°high
54km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.3 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,241 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 37% of the area of London (585 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. Concepción 93,392 inhabitants where it started
    58,668 ha reached on 13 Sept
    2.0 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
13 Sept 36.2 °C 36 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Sept 36.2 °C 37 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Sept 32.2 °C 47 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Sept 33.2 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
17 Sept 35.9 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
18 Sept 37.2 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Sept 36.9 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
20 Sept 37.1 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Sept 34.5 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm High 24
22 Sept 34.0 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Sept 36.1 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 33.5 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Sept 35.7 °C 34 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
26 Sept 36.9 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept 35.3 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Sept 35.5 °C 43 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
29 Sept 36.0 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
30 Sept 36.3 °C 44 % 42 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
1 Oct 37.2 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
2 Oct 36.3 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
3 Oct 34.5 °C 46 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Oct 28.2 °C 58 % 37 km/h 10.5 mm Very low 3
5 Oct 30.5 °C 50 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
6 Oct 31.5 °C 53 % 31 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
7 Oct 32.7 °C 52 % 28 km/h 2.7 mm Low 6
8 Oct 35.8 °C 45 % 28 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 12
9 Oct 34.2 °C 51 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
10 Oct 34.9 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Oct 34.9 °C 43 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Oct 35.9 °C 46 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
13 Oct 35.4 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
14 Oct 34.9 °C 45 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Oct 36.0 °C 42 % 54 km/h 19.9 mm Low 6
16 Oct after 22.8 °C 76 % 37 km/h 10.3 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2021
After · 22 Oct 2021

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 · 3,088Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2021 to 15 October 2021 (33 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2021 to 11 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 58,499 hectares (585.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Concepción (58,668 ha, 2.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 ›

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 13 September 2021 to 11 October 2021. 3,088 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.