Puerto Suárez fire, 5 August 2024 Puerto Suárez
The fire started on 5 August 2024 in Puerto Suárez, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,692 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 103th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 35 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.
- Burnt area
- 20,692ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 5 Aug 2024 – 7 Aug 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 5 Aug
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 478
- in a single hotspot: 270 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Energy released
- 6.3GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.6 mm on 8 Aug.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 326 ha in 2016, 14,468 ha in 2017, 10,228 ha in 2019, 2,887 ha in 2020, 306 ha in 2021, 8,988 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 19,158 ha that had burned before.
- 8,025 ha Puerto Suárez fire, August 2019 151,193 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 6,710 ha Puerto Suárez fire, September 2022 12,289 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,461 ha Puerto Suárez fire, July 2017 9,620 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,949 ha Puerto Suárez fire, August 2017 5,995 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,499 ha Corumbá fire, July 2020 5,420 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,335 ha Puerto Suárez fire, September 2017 3,796 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,344 ha Corumbá fire, July 2017 5,716 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 691 ha Puerto Suárez fire, September 2022 4,407 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
18,688 ha1.4 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 Aug | 37.3 °C | 24 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 6 Aug | 36.3 °C | 16 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 7 Aug | 36.6 °C | 22 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 8 Aug after | 23.4 °C | 74 % | 37 km/h | 12.6 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 10 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 170 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 62: 4.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 478Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,289 haPuerto Suárez3 September 2022 · 8 days · 3 km away
- 13,368 haCorumbá2 September 2017 · 8 days · 10 km away
- 151,193 haPuerto Suárez19 August 2019 · 8 days · 16 km away
- 12,123 haPuerto Suárez9 November 2025 · 3 days · 25 km away
- 15,983 haPuerto SuárezDecember 2016 · 17 days · 30 km away
- 40,736 haPuerto Suárez22 July 2020 · 8 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Puerto Suárez fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 August 2024 and 7 August 2024: 3 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 20,692 hectares (206.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Puerto Suárez (18,688 ha, 1.4 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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
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
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.