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Concepción fire, October 2022 Concepción

Out · last detection 16 Nov 2022, 17:08 UTC

The fire started on 25 October 2022 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 172th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 33 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Burnt area
12,474ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
22days
25 Oct 2022 – 15 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Oct
2022
Heat detections
1,216
in a single hotspot: 239 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Energy released
10.7GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Nov 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Oct15 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

2526272829303112345678910111213141516

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
75km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.6 mm on 21 Nov.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 841 ha in 2016, 1,411 ha in 2017, 940 ha in 2018, 7,164 ha in 2019, 676 ha in 2020, 4,267 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,309 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Concepción 93,392 inhabitants where it started
    12,584 ha
    0.4 %

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)
25 Oct 33.5 °C 54 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 1
26 Oct 33.4 °C 55 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 5
27 Oct 28.4 °C 70 % 27 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 0
28 Oct 32.6 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 1
29 Oct 31.7 °C 54 % 48 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 4
30 Oct 30.5 °C 59 % 58 km/h 1.4 mm Very low 5
31 Oct 25.0 °C 55 % 73 km/h 13.2 mm Very low 1
1 Nov 20.8 °C 33 % 75 km/h 0.1 mm Low 6
2 Nov 24.5 °C 23 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
3 Nov 26.3 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
4 Nov 28.8 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Nov 30.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
6 Nov 32.2 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
7 Nov 34.4 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
8 Nov 35.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
9 Nov 35.5 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
10 Nov 33.9 °C 46 % 50 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 12
11 Nov 34.0 °C 50 % 52 km/h 2.6 mm Low 6
12 Nov 32.0 °C 53 % 54 km/h 1.8 mm Low 6
13 Nov 33.2 °C 48 % 62 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 14
14 Nov 29.6 °C 67 % 40 km/h 13.5 mm Very low 0
15 Nov 31.5 °C 55 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 3
16 Nov after 34.9 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
17 Nov after 36.4 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Nov after 36.6 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
19 Nov after 34.0 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
20 Nov after 33.8 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 17
21 Nov after 29.6 °C 63 % 38 km/h 13.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Oct 2022
After · 22 Nov 2022

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 28 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 564 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 270: 18 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak564 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM10806 µg/m³
Optical depth2.30
232425262728293031123456789101112131415161718
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 · 1,216Every 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 25 October 2022 and 15 November 2022: 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 12,474 hectares (124.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Concepción (12,584 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 17, 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.