Exaltación fire, 19 July 2024 Exaltación
The fire started on 19 July 2024 in Exaltación, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,355 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 256th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 904 with a page). Number 109 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 7,355ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 9days
- 19 Jul 2024 – 27 Jul 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 19 Jul
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 199
- in a single hotspot: 63 MW
- Danger at start
- 27
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 628MW
- 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 54 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,125 ha in 2016, 942 ha in 2017, 316 ha in 2018, 3,291 ha in 2019, 4,575 ha in 2021, 3,844 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,150 ha that had burned before.
- 4,111 ha Exaltación fire, July 2021 10,169 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,929 ha Exaltación fire, July 2016 11,645 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,107 ha Exaltación fire, September 2019 6,366 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,258 ha Exaltación fire, July 2023 4,172 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 184 ha Exaltación fire, August 2019 4,016 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
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
-
7,383 ha reached on 19 Jul0.3 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 19 Jul | 33.4 °C | 35 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 20 Jul | 34.3 °C | 34 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 21 Jul | 34.9 °C | 32 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 22 Jul | 35.9 °C | 33 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 23 Jul | 34.7 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Jul | 35.1 °C | 32 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 25 Jul | 35.2 °C | 34 % | 16 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 26 Jul | 35.7 °C | 36 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 27 Jul | 36.5 °C | 33 % | 19 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Jul after | 35.4 °C | 36 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 29 Jul after | 36.1 °C | 30 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 30 Jul after | 30.3 °C | 42 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 31 Jul after | 34.1 °C | 39 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 1 Aug after | 35.4 °C | 36 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 2 Aug after | 35.9 °C | 36 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Aug after | 35.6 °C | 40 % | 42 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Aug after | 36.7 °C | 37 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Aug after | 36.3 °C | 37 % | 25 km/h | 0.8 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Aug after | 34.6 °C | 47 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
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 25 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 149 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 64: 4.2 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 · 199Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,169 haExaltación29 July 2021 · 4 days · 2 km away
- 11,645 haExaltación17 July 2016 · 11 days · 5 km away
- 9,991 haExaltación26 September 2026 · 5 days · 5 km away
- 12,949 haExaltación31 August 2026 · 7 days · 13 km away
- 11,441 haExaltación14 August 2016 · 16 days · 14 km away
- 20,914 haExaltación1 August 2024 · 26 days · 23 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Exaltación fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 July 2024 and 27 July 2024: 9 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 7,355 hectares (73.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Exaltación (7,383 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, 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.
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. 199 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.