How long did the San Ignacio fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2025 to 26 October 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2025 to 26 October 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,966 hectares (89.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San Ignacio (9,037 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.

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 · 2025-10-05 → 2025-10-26

San Ignacio fire, 5 October 2025 San Ignacio

Out · last detection 26 Oct 2025, 05:23 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2025 in San Ignacio, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 22 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,966 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 185th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 904 with a page). Number 21 in Bolivia in 2025, of 94.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Ignacio · 2024 Loreto · 2025 Villa Tunari · 2023 Loreto · 2019

Burnt area: 8,966ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 22days; 5 Oct 2025 – 26 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 5 Oct; 2025
Heat detections: 314; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 14; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 182MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct26 Oct

Play back 26 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct

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

58km/h · peak gust

24%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 35.2 mm on 27 Oct.

This area had burned before

82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 104 ha in 2016, 3,267 ha in 2017, 1,887 ha in 2018, 4,305 ha in 2019, 2,026 ha in 2020, 2,275 ha in 2022, 3,762 ha in 2023, 2,303 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,319 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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 Ignacio 21,584 inhabitants where it started

9,037 ha reached on 5 Oct

0.4 %

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)
5 Oct	37.3 °C	40 %	58 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
6 Oct	35.9 °C	45 %	37 km/h	7.1 mm	Very low 2
7 Oct	22.9 °C	46 %	35 km/h	8.1 mm	Very low 1
8 Oct	30.0 °C	27 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
9 Oct	32.8 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
10 Oct	36.2 °C	28 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
11 Oct	37.4 °C	31 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
12 Oct	35.8 °C	47 %	53 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 16
13 Oct	28.5 °C	68 %	34 km/h	15.9 mm	Very low 0
14 Oct	30.7 °C	52 %	25 km/h	6.8 mm	Very low 0
15 Oct	33.9 °C	53 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
16 Oct	34.7 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
17 Oct	37.0 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
18 Oct	35.8 °C	40 %	37 km/h	14.8 mm	Very low 2
19 Oct	32.1 °C	44 %	35 km/h	2.0 mm	Very low 5
20 Oct	33.7 °C	37 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
21 Oct	36.1 °C	29 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
22 Oct	35.9 °C	39 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
23 Oct	34.5 °C	51 %	30 km/h	0.7 mm	Low 10
24 Oct	35.3 °C	47 %	45 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 14
25 Oct	35.3 °C	42 %	55 km/h	0.5 mm	Moderate 17
26 Oct	32.4 °C	54 %	41 km/h	25.3 mm	Very low 1
27 Oct after	22.9 °C	86 %	30 km/h	35.2 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Sept 2025

After · 2 Nov 2025

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 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³

Days over the guideline9 days

PM1087 µg/m³

Optical depth0.82

WHO 15

7891011121314151617181920212223242526272829

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 · 314Every 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 Ignacio fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2025 to 26 October 2025 (22 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 October 2025 to 26 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,966 hectares (89.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San Ignacio (9,037 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 20, class Moderate.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 6 October 2025 → 5 October 2025.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 October 2025 to 26 October 2025. 314 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