How long did the Magdalena fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2024 to 25 September 2024 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2024 to 25 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,917 hectares (99.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Magdalena (9,966 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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.

BO · Bolivia · 2024-09-05 → 2024-09-25

Magdalena fire, 5 September 2024 Magdalena

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2024, 18:17 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2024 in Magdalena, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,917 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 158th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 902 with a page). Number 82 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Magdalena · 2020 Magdalena · 2023 Magdalena · 2023 Magdalena · 2024

Burnt area: 9,917ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 5 Sept 2024 – 25 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 5 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 410; in a single hotspot: 315 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 271MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept25 Sept

Play back 25 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 21 Sept 24 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

40km/h · peak gust

32%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.6 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,676 ha in 2016, 501 ha in 2017, 927 ha in 2019, 4,680 ha in 2020, 1,065 ha in 2021, 1,591 ha in 2022, 5,470 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,121 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.3% of the area of London (99 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

Magdalena 12,785 inhabitants where it started

9,966 ha reached on 5 Sept

0.7 %

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)
5 Sept	30.6 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
6 Sept	32.8 °C	34 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
7 Sept	35.1 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
8 Sept	36.3 °C	35 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
9 Sept	37.7 °C	32 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
10 Sept	37.2 °C	35 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
11 Sept	37.0 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
12 Sept	37.3 °C	43 %	31 km/h	1.2 mm	Moderate 21
13 Sept	37.4 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Sept	36.7 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
15 Sept	29.9 °C	51 %	35 km/h	0.1 mm	High 27
16 Sept	30.9 °C	44 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
17 Sept	34.6 °C	40 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Sept	36.1 °C	38 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
19 Sept	36.7 °C	38 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
20 Sept	38.1 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
21 Sept	37.2 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
22 Sept	37.9 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
23 Sept	37.7 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Sept	37.2 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Sept	37.9 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
26 Sept after	36.8 °C	40 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 37
27 Sept after	29.8 °C	51 %	39 km/h	2.6 mm	Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 29 Aug 2024

After · 2 Oct 2024

Before After

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 1 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 288 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 218: 15 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak288 µg/m³

Days over the guideline32 days

PM10412 µg/m³

Optical depth6.06

WHO 15

2829303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728

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 · 410Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Bolivia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Magdalena fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 September 2024 to 25 September 2024 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2024 to 25 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,917 hectares (99.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Magdalena (9,966 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, 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 ›

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 6 September 2024 to 25 September 2024. 410 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.

Where it burned