How long did the San Joaquín fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 July 2016 and 2 August 2016: 12 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 4,521 hectares (45.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San Joaquín (4,530 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · 2016-07-22 → 2016-08-02

San Joaquín fire, 22 July 2016 San Joaquín

Out · last detection 3 Aug 2016, 17:59 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2016 in San Joaquín, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,521 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 509th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 902 with a page). Number 102 in Bolivia in 2016, of 187.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Puerto Siles · 2024 Guayaramerín · 2024

Burnt area: 4,521ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 22 Jul 2016 – 2 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 22 Jul; 2016
Heat detections: 149; in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start: 23; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 219MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul2 Aug

Play back 3 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 23 Jul 24 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 3 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

28km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.8 mm on 9 Aug.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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 Joaquín 6,808 inhabitants where it started

4,530 ha

0.5 %

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.

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)
22 Jul	32.6 °C	39 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
23 Jul	32.8 °C	36 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Jul	32.5 °C	40 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Jul	34.1 °C	36 %	16 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
26 Jul	32.7 °C	46 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
27 Jul	31.9 °C	46 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
28 Jul	31.4 °C	49 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Jul	34.4 °C	31 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
30 Jul	35.2 °C	27 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
31 Jul	35.5 °C	31 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
1 Aug	36.4 °C	30 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
2 Aug	33.1 °C	41 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
3 Aug after	33.8 °C	41 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
4 Aug after	35.4 °C	32 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
5 Aug after	34.4 °C	39 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
6 Aug after	35.1 °C	41 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
7 Aug after	34.4 °C	48 %	21 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
8 Aug after	33.1 °C	50 %	25 km/h	0.6 mm	Moderate 21
9 Aug after	27.1 °C	71 %	42 km/h	16.8 mm	Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Jul 2016

After · 9 Aug 2016

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.

Detections table · 149Every 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 Joaquín fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 July 2016 and 2 August 2016: 12 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 4,521 hectares (45.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San Joaquín (4,530 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 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?

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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. 149 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.

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