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Concepción fire, 25 October 2022 Concepción

Out · last detection 20 Nov 2022, 17:33 UTC

The fire started on 25 October 2022 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 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 837 with a page). Number 33 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Concepción · 2019Concepción · 2021Concepción · 2024Concepción · 2019

Burnt area
12,474ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
25 Oct 2022 – 20 Nov 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Oct
2022
Heat detections
1,216
in a single hotspot: 239 MW
Danger at start
2
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
504MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Oct20 Nov
20 Nov 2022

How it evolved, day by day

25 Oct 2022 · 702 MW · 20 26 Oct 2022 · 2,169 MW · 260 27 Oct 2022 · 440 MW · 83 28 Oct 2022 · 41 MW · 18 29 Oct 2022 · 257 MW · 25 30 Oct 2022 · 264 MW · 52 31 Oct 2022 · 20 MW · 10 1 Nov 2022 · 60 MW · 8 2 Nov 2022 · 752 MW · 67 3 Nov 2022 · 206 MW · 42 4 Nov 2022 · 184 MW · 44 5 Nov 2022 · 112 MW · 23 6 Nov 2022 · 19 MW · 12 7 Nov 2022 · 12 MW · 2 8 Nov 2022 · 177 MW · 26 9 Nov 2022 · 1,683 MW · 111 10 Nov 2022 · 2,220 MW · 156 11 Nov 2022 · 164 MW · 31 12 Nov 2022 · 573 MW · 57 13 Nov 2022 · 489 MW · 37 14 Nov 2022 · 179 MW · 20 15 Nov 2022 · 4 MW · 1 16 Nov 2022 · 3 MW · 1 17 Nov 2022 · 2,617 MW · 56 18 Nov 2022 · 177 MW · 26 19 Nov 2022 · 81 MW · 23 20 Nov 2022 · 14 MW · 5
25 Oct 29 Oct 2 Nov 6 Nov 10 Nov 14 Nov 17 Nov 18 Nov

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.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.9% of the area of London (125 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
    12,584 ha reached on 25 Oct
    0.4 %

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 area0.36 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.36 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
25 Oct 33.5 °C 54 % 22 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 2
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 5
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 7
2 Nov 24.5 °C 23 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Nov 26.3 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
4 Nov 28.8 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
5 Nov 30.0 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
6 Nov 32.2 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
7 Nov 34.4 °C 30 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
8 Nov 35.4 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
9 Nov 35.5 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
10 Nov 33.9 °C 46 % 50 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 13
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 8
13 Nov 33.2 °C 48 % 62 km/h 0.5 mm Moderate 16
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 34.9 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
17 Nov 36.4 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
18 Nov 36.6 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
19 Nov 34.0 °C 45 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
20 Nov 33.8 °C 44 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
21 Nov after 29.6 °C 63 % 38 km/h 13.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Oct 2022
After · 27 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 October 2022 to 20 November 2022 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 October 2022 to 15 November 2022.
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 20, 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 · 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 October 2022 to 15 November 2022. 1,216 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.