Concepción fire, 16 September 2025 Concepción, San Ignacio
The fire started on 16 September 2025 in Concepción, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,881 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 374th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 40 in Bolivia in 2025, of 94.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 5,881ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 15days
- 16 Sept 2025 – 30 Sept 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 16 Sept
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 161
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 20
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 99MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.1 mm on 1 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
5,891 ha0.2 %
-
San Ignacio 56,702 inhabitants0 ha0.0 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Sept | 34.9 °C | 44 % | 22 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 17 Sept | 33.5 °C | 46 % | 27 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 22 |
| 18 Sept | 33.9 °C | 49 % | 25 km/h | 3.6 mm | Low 7 |
| 19 Sept | 35.0 °C | 43 % | 40 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 20 Sept | 36.0 °C | 43 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 21 Sept | 34.4 °C | 43 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 22 Sept | 35.6 °C | 34 % | 50 km/h | 3.4 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 23 Sept | 33.4 °C | 45 % | 30 km/h | 0.2 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 24 Sept | 35.1 °C | 42 % | 30 km/h | 3.5 mm | Low 7 |
| 25 Sept | 36.9 °C | 27 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 26 Sept | 36.9 °C | 38 % | 28 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 26 |
| 27 Sept | 36.1 °C | 39 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 29 |
| 28 Sept | 32.2 °C | 58 % | 26 km/h | 8.2 mm | Very low 3 |
| 29 Sept | 34.8 °C | 40 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 30 Sept | 36.4 °C | 41 % | 34 km/h | 1.2 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 1 Oct after | 31.0 °C | 57 % | 30 km/h | 4.1 mm | Very low 3 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 9 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 82 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 161Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,392 haConcepción8 November 2023 · 12 days · 11 km away
- 23,271 haConcepción3 October 2023 · 22 days · 22 km away
- 85,746 haConcepción2 October 2020 · 38 days · 27 km away
- 37,064 haSan Ignacio9 November 2023 · 11 days · 27 km away
- 49,878 haConcepción5 November 2023 · 18 days · 35 km away
- 15,781 haConcepción4 October 2025 · 10 days · 38 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Concepción fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2025 and 30 September 2025: 15 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 5,881 hectares (58.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Concepción (5,891 ha, 0.2 %); San Ignacio (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 62 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
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
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. 161 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.
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.