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Loreto fire, 17 October 2023 Loreto, Villa Tunari

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2023, 04:49 UTC

The fire started on 17 October 2023 in Loreto, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,168 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 68th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 902 with a page). Number 23 in Bolivia in 2023, of 248.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Loreto · 2019Loreto · 2022Loreto · 2019Loreto · 2023

Burnt area
17,168ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
17 Oct 2023 – 28 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
17 Oct
2023
Heat detections
744
in a single hotspot: 139 MW
Danger at start
21
High · FWI index
Average daily power
900MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

28 Oct 2023
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Oct28 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

17 Oct 2023 · 108 MW · 12 18 Oct 2023 · 319 MW · 35 19 Oct 2023 · 265 MW · 31 20 Oct 2023 · 528 MW · 53 21 Oct 2023 · 1,965 MW · 81 22 Oct 2023 · 2,374 MW · 111 23 Oct 2023 · 1,171 MW · 124 24 Oct 2023 · 2,312 MW · 146 25 Oct 2023 · 549 MW · 81 26 Oct 2023 · 279 MW · 44 28 Oct 2023 · 27 MW · 14
17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 28 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
59km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.8 mm on 29 Oct.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,054 ha in 2016, 1,196 ha in 2018, 5,894 ha in 2019, 1,412 ha in 2020, 537 ha in 2021, 4,529 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,367 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (172 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. Loreto 4,269 inhabitants where it started
    14,142 ha
    2.1 %
  2. Villa Tunari 334,685 inhabitants
    3,113 ha
    0.3 %

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)
17 Oct 37.0 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
18 Oct 36.6 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
19 Oct 37.5 °C 45 % 22 km/h 1.2 mm Low 11
20 Oct 33.6 °C 61 % 29 km/h 3.1 mm Very low 4
21 Oct 38.9 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
22 Oct 39.9 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
23 Oct 38.6 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
24 Oct 37.2 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Oct 37.1 °C 44 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
26 Oct 31.5 °C 65 % 42 km/h 5.9 mm Very low 2
27 Oct 30.5 °C 75 % 55 km/h 15.1 mm Very low 0
28 Oct 33.1 °C 53 % 59 km/h 0.9 mm Very low 4
29 Oct after 32.2 °C 64 % 63 km/h 6.8 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Oct 2023
After · 4 Nov 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 26 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 125 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 69: 4.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak125 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10179 µg/m³
Optical depth1.88
1516171819202122232425262728293031
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 · 744Every 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 Loreto fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 October 2023 and 28 October 2023: 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 17,168 hectares (171.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Loreto (14,142 ha, 2.1 %); Villa Tunari (3,113 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 744 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.