How long did the San José fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2016 and 23 October 2016: 15 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 3,102 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San José (3,120 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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 · 2016-10-09 → 2016-10-23

San José fire, 9 October 2016 San José

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2016, 05:08 UTC

The fire started on 9 October 2016 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,102 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 803th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 834 with a page). Number 173 in Bolivia in 2016, of 187.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2025 San José · 2019 San José · 2022 San José · 2023

Burnt area: 3,102ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 9 Oct 2016 – 23 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 9 Oct; 2016
Heat detections: 375; in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start: 10; Low · FWI index
Average daily power: 272MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 23 Oct 2016

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Oct23 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

9 Oct 11 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 23 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

68km/h · peak gust

34%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 25 Oct.

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% of the area of London (31 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 José 60,359 inhabitants where it started

3,120 ha

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
9 Oct	34.2 °C	41 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
10 Oct	35.7 °C	37 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
11 Oct	34.6 °C	46 %	34 km/h	0.9 mm	Low 9
12 Oct	32.9 °C	51 %	58 km/h	7.0 mm	Very low 2
13 Oct	33.9 °C	47 %	63 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 10
14 Oct	34.0 °C	54 %	48 km/h	9.6 mm	Very low 1
15 Oct	34.7 °C	46 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
16 Oct	36.0 °C	42 %	68 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
17 Oct	36.3 °C	38 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 15
18 Oct	36.5 °C	38 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 16
19 Oct	37.2 °C	34 %	61 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
20 Oct	32.9 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 14
21 Oct	27.3 °C	59 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
22 Oct	33.9 °C	47 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
23 Oct	35.2 °C	47 %	29 km/h	5.0 mm	Very low 3
24 Oct after	34.8 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
25 Oct after	34.3 °C	49 %	49 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Oct 2016

After · 30 Oct 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 · 375Every 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 José fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 October 2016 and 23 October 2016: 15 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 3,102 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San José (3,120 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 19, 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

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 375 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