How long did the Cuatro Cañadas fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2019 and 19 August 2019: 5 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 3,117 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cuatro Cañadas (3,132 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.

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 · 2019-08-15 → 2019-08-19

Cuatro Cañadas fire, August 2019 Cuatro Cañadas

Out · last detection 19 Aug 2019, 17:26 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2019 in Cuatro Cañadas, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,117 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 794th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 208 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cuatro Cañadas · 2017 Cuatro Cañadas · 2021 San Miguel · 2016 San Antonio de Lomerío · 2018

Burnt area: 3,117ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 15 Aug 2019 – 19 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 15 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 166; in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 669MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug19 Aug

Play back 19 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high

73km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 25 Aug.

This area had burned before

78% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,866 ha in 2016, 422 ha in 2017, 1,383 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,441 ha that had burned before.

422 ha Cuatro Cañadas fire, August 2017 3,023 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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

Cuatro Cañadas 25,258 inhabitants where it started

3,132 ha

0.7 %

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.

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)
15 Aug	33.2 °C	16 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
16 Aug	36.4 °C	22 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Aug	36.5 °C	27 %	73 km/h	0.0 mm	Very extreme 71
18 Aug	34.9 °C	35 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
19 Aug	29.3 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 43
20 Aug after	30.3 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Aug after	33.8 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
22 Aug after	37.6 °C	23 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
23 Aug after	32.2 °C	26 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
24 Aug after	37.1 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Aug after	36.9 °C	30 %	47 km/h	1.5 mm	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Aug 2019

After · 26 Aug 2019

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 · 166Every 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 Cuatro Cañadas fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 August 2019 and 19 August 2019: 5 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 3,117 hectares (31.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cuatro Cañadas (3,132 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 73 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very extreme.
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 ›

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

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. 166 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