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Loreto fire, 23 September 2019 Loreto, San Andrés

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2019, 18:04 UTC

The fire started on 23 September 2019 in Loreto, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,232 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 560th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 902 with a page). Number 151 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Loreto · 2016Loreto · 2025Loreto · 2024Loreto · 2023

Burnt area
4,232ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
23 Sept 2019 – 4 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
23 Sept
2019
Heat detections
125
in a single hotspot: 60 MW
Danger at start
27
High · FWI index
Average daily power
168MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Sept4 Oct
4 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

23 Sept 2019 · 27 MW · 6 24 Sept 2019 · 139 MW · 5 25 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 3 26 Sept 2019 · 34 MW · 6 27 Sept 2019 · 395 MW · 28 28 Sept 2019 · 841 MW · 58 29 Sept 2019 · 104 MW · 5 30 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 2 3 Oct 2019 · 79 MW · 8 4 Oct 2019 · 55 MW · 4
23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 28 Sept 29 Sept 3 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

37°high
46km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.8 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,926 ha in 2016, 502 ha in 2017, 2,385 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,251 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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
    3,058 ha reached on 23 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. San Andrés 15,570 inhabitants
    1,197 ha reached on 27 Sept
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
23 Sept 36.2 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Sept 36.7 °C 33 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
25 Sept 33.8 °C 39 % 40 km/h 1.2 mm High 22
26 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Sept 35.6 °C 32 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Sept 36.5 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
29 Sept 36.5 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
30 Sept 36.8 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
1 Oct 33.4 °C 54 % 58 km/h 8.8 mm Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Sept 2019
After · 11 Oct 2019

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 · 125Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 September 2019 to 4 October 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 23 September 2019 to 30 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,232 hectares (42.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Loreto (3,058 ha, 0.4 %); San Andrés (1,197 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 46 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 30 September 2019 → 4 October 2019.

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 23 September 2019 to 30 September 2019. 125 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 2020, 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.