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Pailón fire, October 2017 Pailón

Out · last detection 19 Oct 2017, 05:39 UTC

The fire started on 12 October 2017 in Pailón, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,362 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 256th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 26 in Bolivia in 2017, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pailón · 2016Pailón · 2016Pailón · 2016Pailón · 2023

Burnt area
8,362ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
12 Oct 2017 – 19 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
12 Oct
2017
Heat detections
389
in a single hotspot: 141 MW
Danger at start
19
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
367MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Oct19 Oct
19 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Oct 2017 · 3 MW · 2 13 Oct 2017 · 5 MW · 3 14 Oct 2017 · 586 MW · 26 15 Oct 2017 · 514 MW · 118 16 Oct 2017 · 813 MW · 21 17 Oct 2017 · 775 MW · 136 18 Oct 2017 · 159 MW · 39 19 Oct 2017 · 79 MW · 17
12 Oct 14 Oct 16 Oct 18 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

39°high
67km/h · peak gust
32%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.8 mm on 27 Oct.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 14,936 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,113 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.3% of the area of London (84 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. Pailón 54,495 inhabitants where it started
    8,412 ha
    0.6 %

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)
12 Oct 38.0 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 19
13 Oct 28.1 °C 59 % 49 km/h 1.9 mm Low 7
14 Oct 26.4 °C 46 % 51 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
15 Oct 31.7 °C 40 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
16 Oct 37.5 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Oct 39.1 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
18 Oct 37.9 °C 37 % 58 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
19 Oct 38.3 °C 35 % 62 km/h 2.9 mm Moderate 20
20 Oct after 29.5 °C 60 % 48 km/h 7.3 mm Very low 2
21 Oct after 33.9 °C 50 % 61 km/h 0.3 mm Low 11
22 Oct after 25.7 °C 70 % 53 km/h 12.8 mm Very low 1
23 Oct after 26.6 °C 64 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
24 Oct after 33.2 °C 48 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm Low 8
25 Oct after 35.2 °C 44 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
26 Oct after 37.8 °C 37 % 67 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
27 Oct after 36.9 °C 39 % 66 km/h 8.8 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Oct 2017
After · 26 Oct 2017

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 · 389Every 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 Pailón fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 October 2017 and 19 October 2017: 8 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 8,362 hectares (83.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pailón (8,412 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 389 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.