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San José fire, 8 July 2016 San José

Out · last detection 6 Aug 2016, 17:01 UTC

The fire started on 8 July 2016 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,655 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 278th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 837 with a page). Number 48 in Bolivia in 2016, of 187.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2022San José · 2025San José · 2024San José · 2025

Burnt area
7,655ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
8 Jul 2016 – 6 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
8 Jul
2016
Heat detections
656
in a single hotspot: 66 MW
Danger at start
16
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
148MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Jul6 Aug
6 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jul 2016 · 152 MW · 30 9 Jul 2016 · 17 MW · 9 10 Jul 2016 · 18 MW · 5 11 Jul 2016 · 32 MW · 3 12 Jul 2016 · 60 MW · 8 13 Jul 2016 · 6 MW · 4 14 Jul 2016 · 53 MW · 9 15 Jul 2016 · 50 MW · 12 16 Jul 2016 · 14 MW · 4 18 Jul 2016 · 99 MW · 6 19 Jul 2016 · 17 MW · 10 20 Jul 2016 · 111 MW · 17 21 Jul 2016 · 109 MW · 22 22 Jul 2016 · 569 MW · 79 23 Jul 2016 · 325 MW · 60 24 Jul 2016 · 137 MW · 27 25 Jul 2016 · 72 MW · 6 26 Jul 2016 · 82 MW · 13 27 Jul 2016 · 288 MW · 56 28 Jul 2016 · 225 MW · 43 29 Jul 2016 · 199 MW · 43 30 Jul 2016 · 526 MW · 52 31 Jul 2016 · 30 MW · 7 2 Aug 2016 · 90 MW · 15 3 Aug 2016 · 136 MW · 23 4 Aug 2016 · 167 MW · 38 5 Aug 2016 · 496 MW · 45 6 Aug 2016 · 53 MW · 10
8 Jul 12 Jul 16 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 25 Jul 29 Jul 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
58km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (77 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 José 60,359 inhabitants where it started
    7,690 ha reached on 8 Jul
    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 2015
Built-up area15 ha
Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 15 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
8 Jul 31.9 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
9 Jul 32.9 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
10 Jul 33.6 °C 39 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Jul 34.5 °C 38 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
12 Jul 33.8 °C 43 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Jul 33.5 °C 44 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Jul 34.3 °C 40 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Jul 33.3 °C 45 % 55 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
16 Jul 23.4 °C 50 % 44 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 19
17 Jul 23.2 °C 40 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Jul 28.1 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
19 Jul 24.2 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
20 Jul 27.5 °C 35 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
21 Jul 28.5 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Jul 30.5 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Jul 32.9 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul 33.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul 34.3 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jul 32.2 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Jul 27.7 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
28 Jul 30.8 °C 40 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
29 Jul 32.9 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Jul 34.4 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
31 Jul 35.4 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Aug 33.9 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Aug 32.1 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug 34.1 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug 34.9 °C 30 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 35.3 °C 26 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Aug 35.9 °C 29 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Aug after 32.9 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug after 30.9 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug after 22.5 °C 60 % 41 km/h 2.8 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Jul 2016
After · 13 Aug 2016

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 · 656Every 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 José fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 July 2016 to 6 August 2016 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 July 2016 to 5 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,655 hectares (76.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San José (7,690 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 58 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 5 August 2016 → 6 August 2016.
  2. Start date: 14 July 2016 → 8 July 2016.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 July 2016 to 5 August 2016. 656 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 2015, 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.