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San Joaquín fire, 25 August 2022 San Joaquín

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2022, 18:18 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2022 in San Joaquín, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 46,026 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 11th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 903 with a page). Number 7 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Joaquín · 2020San Joaquín · 2016San Joaquín · 2021San Ramón · 2022

Burnt area
46,026ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
25 Aug 2022 – 20 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
25 Aug
2022
Heat detections
1,537
in a single hotspot: 274 MW
Danger at start
18
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
1.1GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug20 Sept
20 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2022 · 66 MW · 4 26 Aug 2022 · 13 MW · 2 29 Aug 2022 · 2 MW · 1 30 Aug 2022 · 11 MW · 2 31 Aug 2022 · 35 MW · 10 1 Sept 2022 · 254 MW · 17 2 Sept 2022 · 48 MW · 5 3 Sept 2022 · 1,295 MW · 35 4 Sept 2022 · 1,100 MW · 106 5 Sept 2022 · 1,674 MW · 141 6 Sept 2022 · 1,405 MW · 90 7 Sept 2022 · 2,243 MW · 155 8 Sept 2022 · 7,356 MW · 234 9 Sept 2022 · 719 MW · 78 10 Sept 2022 · 5,845 MW · 401 11 Sept 2022 · 1,192 MW · 131 12 Sept 2022 · 1,379 MW · 99 13 Sept 2022 · 27 MW · 10 16 Sept 2022 · 92 MW · 1 17 Sept 2022 · 25 MW · 3 19 Sept 2022 · 34 MW · 9 20 Sept 2022 · 29 MW · 3
25 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 8 Sept 12 Sept 19 Sept

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
52km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.3 mm on 22 Sept.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,967 ha in 2016, 1,194 ha in 2017, 1,401 ha in 2019, 23,790 ha in 2020, 7 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 26,601 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 29% of the area of London (460 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 Joaquín 6,808 inhabitants where it started
    46,348 ha reached on 25 Aug
    5.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.48 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.48 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
25 Aug 35.3 °C 37 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
26 Aug 34.7 °C 39 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Aug 34.8 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Aug 35.0 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
29 Aug 27.9 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 31.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Aug 33.9 °C 34 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
1 Sept 35.0 °C 38 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
2 Sept 36.8 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 31.8 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Sept 30.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 32.9 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Sept 33.2 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
7 Sept 35.0 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Sept 35.2 °C 39 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Sept 36.6 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Sept 29.7 °C 54 % 35 km/h 2.9 mm Low 8
11 Sept 31.1 °C 38 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
12 Sept 35.1 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
13 Sept 34.8 °C 41 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Sept 30.8 °C 44 % 43 km/h 4.5 mm Low 9
15 Sept 26.7 °C 34 % 52 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 17
16 Sept 32.2 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Sept 35.7 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
18 Sept 36.7 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Sept 36.7 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
20 Sept 37.4 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
21 Sept after 37.1 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
22 Sept after 35.2 °C 41 % 35 km/h 4.3 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2022
After · 27 Sept 2022

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 7 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 896 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 567: 38 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak896 µg/m³
Days over the guideline19 days
PM101,282 µg/m³
Optical depth2.89
29303112345678910111213141516
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 · 1,537Every 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 Joaquín fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 August 2022 to 20 September 2022 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2022 to 13 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 46,026 hectares (460.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Joaquín (46,348 ha, 5.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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 31 August 2022 to 13 September 2022. 1,537 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 2020, 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.