Samaipata fire, September 2020 Samaipata
The fire started on 29 September 2020 in Samaipata, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,511 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 665th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 167 in Bolivia in 2020, of 211.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,511ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 29 Sept 2020 – 3 Oct 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Sept
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 128
- in a single hotspot: 74 MW
- Danger at start
- 13
- Moderate · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 301MW
- detected power per day, on average
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 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 13 Oct.
This area had burned before
24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 385 ha in 2017, 451 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,533 ha1.8 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Sept | 29.3 °C | 40 % | 78 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 13 |
| 30 Sept | 30.7 °C | 38 % | 85 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 1 Oct | 32.5 °C | 31 % | 82 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Oct | 31.9 °C | 37 % | 66 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 3 Oct | 30.9 °C | 40 % | 34 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 14 |
| 4 Oct after | 29.1 °C | 40 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 17 |
| 5 Oct after | 30.2 °C | 30 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 6 Oct after | 30.7 °C | 36 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 7 Oct after | 32.1 °C | 35 % | 73 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 8 Oct after | 31.6 °C | 38 % | 70 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 9 Oct after | 33.0 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 10 Oct after | 32.0 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 11 Oct after | 31.9 °C | 36 % | 48 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 22 |
| 12 Oct after | 30.3 °C | 41 % | 33 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 16 |
| 13 Oct after | 30.2 °C | 41 % | 44 km/h | 4.3 mm | Very low 5 |
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.
Detections table · 128Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Samaipata fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 September 2020 and 3 October 2020: 5 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 3,511 hectares (35.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Samaipata (3,533 ha, 1.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 85 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, 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
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. 128 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.
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.