How long did the San Andrés fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 August 2024 and 22 August 2024: 10 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 3,050 hectares (30.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San Andrés (3,064 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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.

BO · Bolivia · 13 Aug 2024 – 22 Aug 2024

San Andrés fire, 13 August 2024 San Andrés

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2024, 17:14 UTC

The fire started on 13 August 2024 in San Andrés, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,050 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 887th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 908 with a page). Number 289 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Andrés · 2021 San Andrés · 2024 Loreto · 2023 Loreto · 2019

Burnt area: 3,050ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 10days; 13 Aug 2024 – 22 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 13 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start: 17; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 152MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Aug22 Aug

Play back 22 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug 22 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

36°high

45km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 659 ha in 2016, 30 ha in 2017, 240 ha in 2019, 142 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 922 ha that had burned before.

113 ha San Andrés fire, September 2021 4,678 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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

San Andrés 15,570 inhabitants where it started

3,064 ha reached on 13 Aug

0.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.24 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.24 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Aug	28.5 °C	29 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
14 Aug	32.5 °C	33 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
15 Aug	34.7 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
16 Aug	35.9 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
17 Aug	36.5 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Aug	36.5 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
19 Aug	36.1 °C	41 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
20 Aug	36.3 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
21 Aug	35.9 °C	41 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Aug	36.3 °C	36 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
23 Aug after	32.8 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 18
24 Aug after	25.8 °C	49 %	46 km/h	0.4 mm	High 24
25 Aug after	22.8 °C	24 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Aug after	25.6 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
27 Aug after	29.7 °C	32 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Aug after	32.8 °C	32 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Aug after	37.1 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
30 Aug after	35.6 °C	36 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Aug after	34.8 °C	40 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
1 Sept after	30.3 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Aug 2024

After · 29 Aug 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 14 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 92 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 63: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak92 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM10132 µg/m³

Optical depth2.51

WHO 15

11 Aug14 Aug17 Aug20 Aug23 Aug

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 93Every 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 San Andrés fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 August 2024 and 22 August 2024: 10 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 3,050 hectares (30.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San Andrés (3,064 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 29, 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 · 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.

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What really happened?

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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. 93 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 2025, 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