How long did the Puerto Suárez fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2019 to 25 August 2019 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2019 to 19 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,060 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Puerto Suárez (4,463 ha, 0.3 %); El Carmen Rivero Tórrez (621 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.

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 · 2019-07-27 → 2019-08-25

Puerto Suárez fire, July 2019 Puerto Suárez, El Carmen Rivero Tórrez

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2019, 04:42 UTC

The fire started on 27 July 2019 in Puerto Suárez, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,060 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 433th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 835 with a page). Number 120 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: El Carmen Rivero Tórrez · 2018 Puerto Suárez · 2016 El Carmen Rivero Tórrez · 2019 Puerto Suárez · 2024

Burnt area: 5,060ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 30days; 27 Jul 2019 – 25 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 27 Jul; 2019
Heat detections: 724; in a single hotspot: 177 MW
Danger at start: 29; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 313MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jul25 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jul 1 Aug 5 Aug 8 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 17 Aug 23 Aug

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

63km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.3 mm on 27 Aug.

This area had burned before

47% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 475 ha in 2016, 3,601 ha in 2017, 920 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,400 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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

Puerto Suárez 33,006 inhabitants where it started

4,463 ha reached on 27 Jul

0.3 %
El Carmen Rivero Tórrez 8,816 inhabitants

621 ha reached on 30 Jul

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)
30 Jul	34.2 °C	33 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
31 Jul	34.7 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Aug	35.9 °C	25 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
2 Aug	26.8 °C	41 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Aug	22.1 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Aug	24.0 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
5 Aug	27.0 °C	38 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Aug	31.8 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Aug	34.7 °C	34 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Aug	34.7 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
9 Aug	34.0 °C	29 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
10 Aug	25.8 °C	43 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Aug	33.9 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
12 Aug	36.9 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
13 Aug	26.1 °C	34 %	56 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
14 Aug	24.2 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
15 Aug	31.7 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Aug	34.6 °C	27 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Aug	37.1 °C	26 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
18 Aug	36.8 °C	31 %	57 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
19 Aug	28.8 °C	40 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Aug	29.7 °C	38 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
21 Aug	32.6 °C	36 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
22 Aug	36.0 °C	31 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Aug	31.8 °C	40 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
24 Aug	35.5 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Aug	36.3 °C	28 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug after	36.1 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.4 mm	High 35
27 Aug after	31.8 °C	49 %	33 km/h	9.3 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jul 2019

After · 1 Sept 2019

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.

Detections table · 724Every 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 Puerto Suárez fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 July 2019 to 25 August 2019 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2019 to 19 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,060 hectares (50.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Puerto Suárez (4,463 ha, 0.3 %); El Carmen Rivero Tórrez (621 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 63 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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.

Report an error

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 30 July 2019 to 19 August 2019. 724 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.

Where it burned