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BO · Bolivia · –

San Andrés fire, October 2024 San Andrés

Out · last detection 5 Nov 2024, 04:59 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2024 in San Andrés, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,295 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 140th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 859 with a page). Number 77 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Burnt area
10,295ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
11 Oct 2024 – 5 Nov 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Oct
2024
Heat detections
993
in a single hotspot: 312 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
380MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct5 Nov
5 Nov 2024

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2024 · 2,459 MW · 126 12 Oct 2024 · 284 MW · 92 13 Oct 2024 · 2,254 MW · 168 15 Oct 2024 · 29 MW · 9 16 Oct 2024 · 363 MW · 38 17 Oct 2024 · 7 MW · 6 18 Oct 2024 · 27 MW · 13 20 Oct 2024 · 3 MW · 1 21 Oct 2024 · 179 MW · 22 22 Oct 2024 · 161 MW · 38 23 Oct 2024 · 163 MW · 51 24 Oct 2024 · 673 MW · 85 25 Oct 2024 · 718 MW · 145 26 Oct 2024 · 64 MW · 23 28 Oct 2024 · 65 MW · 34 29 Oct 2024 · 318 MW · 17 30 Oct 2024 · 23 MW · 2 31 Oct 2024 · 115 MW · 32 1 Nov 2024 · 133 MW · 38 2 Nov 2024 · 37 MW · 6 4 Nov 2024 · 212 MW · 26 5 Nov 2024 · 63 MW · 21
11 Oct 17 Oct 23 Oct 29 Oct 4 Nov

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
54km/h · peak gust
36%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 24.0 mm on 6 Nov.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,835 ha in 2016, 1,766 ha in 2017, 2,454 ha in 2019, 16,277 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,407 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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. San Andrés 15,570 inhabitants where it started
    11,503 ha reached on 11 Oct
    1.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
11 Oct 36.7 °C 40 % 44 km/h 5.3 mm High 24
12 Oct 36.9 °C 41 % 42 km/h 2.2 mm Low 10
13 Oct 38.5 °C 36 % 25 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15
14 Oct 33.9 °C 52 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
15 Oct 36.9 °C 42 % 37 km/h 0.8 mm High 22
16 Oct 33.9 °C 50 % 33 km/h 4.4 mm Moderate 16
17 Oct 30.8 °C 72 % 33 km/h 24.8 mm Very low 0
18 Oct 34.0 °C 59 % 28 km/h 10.5 mm Very low 1
19 Oct 29.8 °C 63 % 30 km/h 13.8 mm Very low 0
20 Oct 32.4 °C 55 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 1
21 Oct 34.8 °C 55 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Low 8
22 Oct 31.6 °C 68 % 29 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 1
23 Oct 33.9 °C 59 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 1
24 Oct 35.0 °C 53 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
25 Oct 36.6 °C 45 % 46 km/h 11.4 mm Very low 1
26 Oct 28.5 °C 69 % 42 km/h 32.8 mm Very low 0
27 Oct 25.8 °C 77 % 26 km/h 0.9 mm Very low 0
28 Oct 30.6 °C 68 % 19 km/h 0.7 mm Very low 0
29 Oct 34.4 °C 55 % 14 km/h 0.3 mm Very low 1
30 Oct 36.4 °C 41 % 18 km/h 0.4 mm Very low 5
31 Oct 35.5 °C 52 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm Low 7
1 Nov 29.9 °C 74 % 37 km/h 28.7 mm Very low 1
2 Nov 31.9 °C 71 % 40 km/h 19.2 mm Very low 0
3 Nov 31.1 °C 65 % 28 km/h 9.1 mm Very low 0
4 Nov 34.6 °C 58 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 1
5 Nov 35.6 °C 54 % 26 km/h 9.7 mm Very low 4
6 Nov after 26.5 °C 88 % 29 km/h 24.0 mm Very low 0

Its twins: fires that started in the same weather

It started with an FWI of 23.8, a minimum humidity of 40% and rain the day before. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 35.

FWI at the start 23.8
Minimum humidity 40 %
Days without rain 0
this fire chosen twins rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar

Outlines of the closest twins

San Andrés fire, September 2020
3,522 ha 3 days FWI 23.7 Min. humidity 38 % 48 km away, in 2020

First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: 17.7 mm on 28 Sept.

What happened to them

12 days
median duration
4,790 ha
median area
26 %
went past 10,000 ha
6.8 mm
rain at the end (median; 35 of 35 had it)

It was 2.1 times larger than the median of its twins and lasted 26 days, against 12 days.

Only 9 of its 35 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 6.8 mm.

This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it

How it ended

24.0 mmfirst rain
6 Novthe day after it ended
54km/h · max. gust

It was considered over on 5 Nov, and on 6 Nov 24.0 mm fell. We do not know whether the rain or the firefighters put it out. Twins with rain when they ended: 35 of 35, with a median of 6.8 mm.

Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

How a twin is chosen

  • Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
  • Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
  • Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
  • Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
  • They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.

How we calculate it

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2024
After · 12 Nov 2024

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 17 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 462 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 259: 17 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak462 µg/m³
Days over the guideline25 days
PM10659 µg/m³
Optical depth4.56
9 Oct16 Oct23 Oct30 Oct6 Nov
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 · 993Every 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 San Andrés fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 October 2024 and 5 November 2024: 26 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 10,295 hectares (103.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Andrés (11,503 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 36 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, 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.
How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 35. Their median duration was 12 days and their median area 4,790 ha; 26 % went past 10,000 ha. Only 9 of its 35 twins burned more. The weather on the first day does not explain everything: the wind in the following days, the fuel and the firefighting also count. All of them had rain in the ten days after the end: the first rainy day brought a median of 6.8 mm.

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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 11,457 → 10,295 ha.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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. 993 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.