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Puerto Suárez fire, 29 August 2019 Puerto Suárez, Puerto Quijarro

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2019, 17:19 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2019 in Puerto Suárez, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 34 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 68,525 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 22th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 837 with a page). Number 10 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Puerto Quijarro · 2024Puerto Suárez · 2017

Burnt area
68,525ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
34days
29 Aug 2019 – 1 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
29 Aug
2019
Heat detections
4,350
in a single hotspot: 285 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
1.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug1 Oct
1 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2019 · 56 MW · 5 30 Aug 2019 · 355 MW · 16 31 Aug 2019 · 45 MW · 33 1 Sept 2019 · 15 MW · 11 2 Sept 2019 · 24 MW · 4 3 Sept 2019 · 218 MW · 32 4 Sept 2019 · 315 MW · 66 5 Sept 2019 · 492 MW · 27 6 Sept 2019 · 3,613 MW · 116 7 Sept 2019 · 6,478 MW · 192 8 Sept 2019 · 8,028 MW · 297 9 Sept 2019 · 6,505 MW · 627 10 Sept 2019 · 4,632 MW · 528 11 Sept 2019 · 614 MW · 145 12 Sept 2019 · 352 MW · 20 13 Sept 2019 · 408 MW · 42 14 Sept 2019 · 2,158 MW · 236 15 Sept 2019 · 4,989 MW · 393 16 Sept 2019 · 1,486 MW · 291 17 Sept 2019 · 185 MW · 21 18 Sept 2019 · 189 MW · 60 19 Sept 2019 · 751 MW · 190 20 Sept 2019 · 555 MW · 175 21 Sept 2019 · 881 MW · 177 22 Sept 2019 · 1,013 MW · 177 23 Sept 2019 · 755 MW · 127 24 Sept 2019 · 531 MW · 183 25 Sept 2019 · 115 MW · 66 27 Sept 2019 · 72 MW · 15 28 Sept 2019 · 6 MW · 1 29 Sept 2019 · 35 MW · 10 30 Sept 2019 · 285 MW · 47 1 Oct 2019 · 45 MW · 20
29 Aug 3 Sept 8 Sept 13 Sept 18 Sept 23 Sept 29 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

37°high
66km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 4 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 43% of the area of London (685 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. Puerto Suárez 33,006 inhabitants where it started
    66,792 ha reached on 29 Aug
    5.0 %
  2. Puerto Quijarro
    1,846 ha reached on 7 Sept
    1.3 %

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 area0.15 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of 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)
22 Aug 33.4 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
23 Aug 29.4 °C 45 % 43 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
24 Aug 32.6 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Aug 33.0 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
26 Aug 33.1 °C 35 % 42 km/h 2.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Aug 28.1 °C 57 % 35 km/h 6.3 mm Very low 4
28 Aug 31.2 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
29 Aug 32.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Aug 33.8 °C 33 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Aug 33.8 °C 38 % 53 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
1 Sept 26.5 °C 50 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
2 Sept 29.0 °C 49 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
3 Sept 29.1 °C 49 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Sept 32.1 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Sept 30.9 °C 41 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept 35.6 °C 33 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 35.6 °C 27 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 35.9 °C 25 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 35.8 °C 26 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 35.5 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 35.7 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Sept 26.7 °C 52 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Sept 28.5 °C 48 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Sept 34.8 °C 37 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
15 Sept 36.0 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Sept 36.9 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Sept 29.4 °C 42 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 33.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
19 Sept 34.3 °C 41 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Sept 35.4 °C 40 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Sept 30.6 °C 42 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Sept 32.7 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Sept 34.4 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
24 Sept 36.2 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.5 mm High 30
25 Sept 28.7 °C 60 % 42 km/h 14.9 mm Very low 4
26 Sept 27.3 °C 56 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
27 Sept 31.6 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
28 Sept 32.4 °C 52 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 20
29 Sept 33.9 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
30 Sept 34.7 °C 43 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm High 26
1 Oct 32.9 °C 51 % 66 km/h 0.7 mm High 24
2 Oct after 31.6 °C 47 % 58 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
3 Oct after 32.1 °C 45 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Oct after 33.0 °C 48 % 32 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2019
After · 8 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 · 4,350Every 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 Puerto Suárez fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 August 2019 and 1 October 2019: 34 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 68,525 hectares (685.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Puerto Suárez (66,792 ha, 5.0 %); Puerto Quijarro (1,846 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very 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 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?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 4,350 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.