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San José fire, 18 July 2018 San José

Out · last detection 29 Jul 2018, 05:32 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2018 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,267 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 418th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 835 with a page). Number 25 in Bolivia in 2018, of 80.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2016San José · 2023San José · 2021San José · 2016

Burnt area
5,267ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
18 Jul 2018 – 28 Jul 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
18 Jul
2018
Heat detections
218
in a single hotspot: 271 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
616MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul28 Jul
29 Jul 2018

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 2018 · 219 MW · 3 19 Jul 2018 · 801 MW · 21 20 Jul 2018 · 94 MW · 16 22 Jul 2018 · 136 MW · 4 23 Jul 2018 · 1,766 MW · 21 24 Jul 2018 · 176 MW · 35 25 Jul 2018 · 151 MW · 16 26 Jul 2018 · 81 MW · 11 27 Jul 2018 · 2,732 MW · 67 28 Jul 2018 · 619 MW · 23 29 Jul 2018 · 1 MW · 1
18 Jul 20 Jul 23 Jul 25 Jul 27 Jul 29 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

34°high
57km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 36 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.9 mm on 4 Aug.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,622 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3% of the area of London (53 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
    5,304 ha reached on 18 Jul
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Jul 33.5 °C 31 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Jul 29.8 °C 40 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
21 Jul 20.7 °C 41 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
22 Jul 30.1 °C 37 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Jul 25.3 °C 42 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
24 Jul 22.7 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul 25.4 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
26 Jul 25.3 °C 40 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
27 Jul 30.2 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
28 Jul 32.4 °C 29 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul after 28.0 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Jul after 31.0 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
31 Jul after 26.0 °C 37 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
1 Aug after 28.5 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Aug after 28.1 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
3 Aug after 30.4 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Aug after 20.8 °C 60 % 44 km/h 1.9 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jul 2018
After · 4 Aug 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 · 218Every 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 18 July 2018 to 28 July 2018 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 July 2018 to 28 July 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,267 hectares (52.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San José (5,304 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 57 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 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 19 July 2018 to 28 July 2018. 218 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.