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Ixiamas fire, September 2022 Ixiamas

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2022, 06:16 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2022 in Ixiamas, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 28,944 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 4th largest in La Paz since 2016 (of 115 with a page). Number 14 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Burnt area
28,944ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
2 Sept 2022 – 13 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2022
Heat detections
898
in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Energy released
12.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

13 Sept 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept13 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

2345678910111213

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
48km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 21.7 mm on 14 Sept.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,679 ha in 2016, 3,304 ha in 2017, 1,075 ha in 2018, 10,082 ha in 2020, 591 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,711 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Ixiamas 11,828 inhabitants where it started
    29,126 ha
    0.8 %

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)
2 Sept 34.2 °C 44 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
3 Sept 30.0 °C 34 % 48 km/h 1.5 mm High 24
4 Sept 31.0 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Sept 31.9 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Sept 32.8 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 35.0 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Sept 35.4 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
9 Sept 35.2 °C 40 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Sept 32.8 °C 47 % 36 km/h 2.5 mm Moderate 12
11 Sept 32.4 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
12 Sept 34.3 °C 46 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 22
13 Sept 31.5 °C 59 % 32 km/h 6.4 mm Very low 3
14 Sept after 25.4 °C 83 % 40 km/h 21.7 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2022
After · 20 Sept 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 10 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 312 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 200: 13 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak312 µg/m³
Days over the guideline17 days
PM10446 µg/m³
Optical depth3.80
3112345678910111213141516
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 · 898Every 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 Ixiamas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 September 2022 and 13 September 2022: 12 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 28,944 hectares (289.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ixiamas (29,126 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.4 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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
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.