Skip to content
worldfires
en
BO · Bolivia · →

Ixiamas fire, 3 October 2023 Ixiamas

Out · last detection 20 Oct 2023, 18:12 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2023 in Ixiamas, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,573 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in La Paz since 2016 (of 117 with a page). Number 78 in Bolivia in 2023, of 248.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ixiamas · 2020Ixiamas · 2019Ixiamas · 2023Ixiamas · 2020

Burnt area
7,573ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
3 Oct 2023 – 20 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Oct
2023
Heat detections
340
in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
377MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct20 Oct
20 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 2023 · 209 MW · 17 4 Oct 2023 · 935 MW · 42 5 Oct 2023 · 1,527 MW · 55 6 Oct 2023 · 748 MW · 50 7 Oct 2023 · 867 MW · 44 8 Oct 2023 · 318 MW · 76 10 Oct 2023 · 130 MW · 7 11 Oct 2023 · 355 MW · 19 12 Oct 2023 · 68 MW · 8 13 Oct 2023 · 5 MW · 4 17 Oct 2023 · 32 MW · 5 18 Oct 2023 · 26 MW · 4 19 Oct 2023 · 27 MW · 3 20 Oct 2023 · 34 MW · 6
3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
60km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.1 mm on 26 Oct.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,467 ha in 2018, 2,466 ha in 2019, 4,002 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,398 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 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. Ixiamas 11,828 inhabitants where it started
    7,625 ha reached on 3 Oct
    0.2 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside 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)
3 Oct 37.5 °C 41 % 48 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 16
4 Oct 39.8 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
5 Oct 40.0 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.4 mm High 25
6 Oct 39.7 °C 33 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Oct 39.7 °C 33 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
8 Oct 32.8 °C 59 % 34 km/h 19.2 mm Very low 1
9 Oct 29.4 °C 56 % 30 km/h 12.0 mm Very low 0
10 Oct 35.3 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
11 Oct 38.3 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
12 Oct 38.4 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
13 Oct 32.4 °C 54 % 27 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 2
14 Oct 35.1 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
15 Oct 38.2 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 16
16 Oct 36.5 °C 43 % 32 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 12
17 Oct 38.3 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
18 Oct 38.7 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Oct 40.0 °C 31 % 26 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 20
20 Oct 38.1 °C 36 % 26 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 16
21 Oct after 39.5 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
22 Oct after 40.7 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Oct after 40.6 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Oct after 39.6 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Oct after 38.6 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
26 Oct after 36.5 °C 44 % 43 km/h 6.1 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2023
After · 27 Oct 2023

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 8 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 370 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 141: 9.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak370 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10529 µg/m³
Optical depth2.41
12345678910111213141516
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 · 340Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 October 2023 to 20 October 2023 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 October 2023 to 13 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,573 hectares (75.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ixiamas (7,625 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 October 2023 to 13 October 2023. 340 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.

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.