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San José fire, June 2018 San José

Out · last detection 6 Jul 2018, 06:03 UTC

The fire started on 17 June 2018 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,090 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 562th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 835 with a page). Number 46 in Bolivia in 2018, of 80.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2016San José · 2017San José · 2016San José · 2016

Burnt area
4,090ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
17 Jun 2018 – 6 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
17 Jun
2018
Heat detections
182
in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start
14
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
106MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jun6 Jul
6 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jun 2018 · 42 MW · 12 18 Jun 2018 · 2 MW · 1 19 Jun 2018 · 79 MW · 9 20 Jun 2018 · 137 MW · 22 21 Jun 2018 · 89 MW · 23 22 Jun 2018 · 401 MW · 26 23 Jun 2018 · 161 MW · 18 24 Jun 2018 · 36 MW · 7 26 Jun 2018 · 119 MW · 19 27 Jun 2018 · 2 MW · 1 28 Jun 2018 · 7 MW · 3 29 Jun 2018 · 7 MW · 3 1 Jul 2018 · 18 MW · 3 4 Jul 2018 · 70 MW · 6 5 Jul 2018 · 443 MW · 15 6 Jul 2018 · 82 MW · 14
17 Jun 20 Jun 23 Jun 27 Jun 1 Jul 5 Jul 6 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

33°high
56km/h · peak gust
37%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,849 ha in 2016, 6,457 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,910 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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
    4,108 ha reached on 17 Jun
    0.2 %

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 area4.6 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.6 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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)
19 Jun 29.5 °C 49 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
20 Jun 31.0 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
21 Jun 31.8 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Jun 31.8 °C 41 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
23 Jun 32.5 °C 40 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Jun 24.8 °C 63 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
25 Jun 28.9 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
26 Jun 30.5 °C 47 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
27 Jun 32.4 °C 38 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jun 32.9 °C 40 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Jun 33.0 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Jun 33.2 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Jul 33.4 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
2 Jul 33.3 °C 43 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 26.8 °C 66 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
4 Jul 31.2 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
5 Jul 33.1 °C 34 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Jul 33.7 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jul after 33.7 °C 32 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Jul after 21.7 °C 56 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Jul after 14.2 °C 61 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jun 2018
After · 13 Jul 2018

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 · 182Every 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 17 June 2018 to 6 July 2018 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 June 2018 to 29 June 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,090 hectares (40.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San José (4,108 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.0 °C, humidity dropped to 37 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 29 June 2018 → 6 July 2018.
  2. Start date: 19 June 2018 → 17 June 2018.

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 19 June 2018 to 29 June 2018. 182 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.