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BO · Bolivia · –

San Ignacio fire, 15 October 2025 San Ignacio, Loreto

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2025, 18:14 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2025 in San Ignacio, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,070 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 8 in Bolivia in 2025, of 32.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Burnt area
7,070ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
15 Oct 2025 – 25 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Oct
2025
Heat detections
277
in a single hotspot: 179 MW
Danger at start
3
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
349MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct25 Oct
25 Oct 2025

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2025 · 5 MW · 2 16 Oct 2025 · 164 MW · 8 17 Oct 2025 · 286 MW · 39 18 Oct 2025 · 300 MW · 22 20 Oct 2025 · 254 MW · 15 22 Oct 2025 · 71 MW · 10 23 Oct 2025 · 650 MW · 60 24 Oct 2025 · 323 MW · 32 25 Oct 2025 · 1,089 MW · 89
15 Oct 17 Oct 20 Oct 23 Oct 25 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
54km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.1 mm on 26 Oct.

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 636 ha in 2016, 93 ha in 2018, 4,768 ha in 2019, 2,236 ha in 2021, 1,079 ha in 2022, 4,835 ha in 2023, 6,761 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,743 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (71 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 Ignacio 21,584 inhabitants where it started
    7,033 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.3 %
  2. Loreto 4,269 inhabitants
    76 ha reached on 24 Oct
    0.0 %

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 area0.13 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of 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)
15 Oct 33.3 °C 53 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very low 3
16 Oct 34.4 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Low 8
17 Oct 36.7 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
18 Oct 36.2 °C 41 % 40 km/h 11.0 mm Very low 3
19 Oct 32.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 3.6 mm Very low 3
20 Oct 34.0 °C 37 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
21 Oct 36.1 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
22 Oct 35.6 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
23 Oct 33.3 °C 53 % 25 km/h 0.9 mm Low 7
24 Oct 35.7 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
25 Oct 35.5 °C 43 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
26 Oct after 32.6 °C 54 % 42 km/h 10.1 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2025
After · 1 Nov 2025

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 15 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 82 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 3.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak82 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1083 µg/m³
Optical depth0.88
13 Oct17 Oct21 Oct25 Oct
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 · 277Every 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 Ignacio fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 October 2025 to 25 October 2025 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 October 2025 to 25 October 2025.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,070 hectares (70.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Ignacio (7,033 ha, 0.3 %); Loreto (76 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 16, 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

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. Start date: 16 October 2025 → 15 October 2025.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 October 2025 to 25 October 2025. 277 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.