How long did the San José fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 June 2024 to 4 July 2024 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 June 2024 to 29 June 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,533 hectares (65.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered San José (6,570 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

BO · Bolivia · 2024-06-04 → 2024-07-04

San José fire, June 2024 San José

Out · last detection 4 Jul 2024, 17:32 UTC

The fire started on 4 June 2024 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,533 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 331th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 836 with a page). Number 123 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2018 San José · 2025 San José · 2022 San José · 2019

Burnt area: 6,533ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 31days; 4 Jun 2024 – 4 Jul 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 4 Jun; 2024
Heat detections: 466; in a single hotspot: 292 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 134MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jun4 Jul

Play back 4 Jul 2024

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jun 8 Jun 12 Jun 16 Jun 22 Jun 27 Jun 3 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

35°high

64km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 104 ha in 2017, 1,869 ha in 2018, 367 ha in 2019, 720 ha in 2020, 2,315 ha in 2022, 4,321 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,021 ha that had burned before.

1,869 ha San José fire, July 2018 3,913 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.1% of the area of London (65 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

6,570 ha reached on 4 Jun

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 2025

Built-up area0.11 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
4 Jun	31.2 °C	42 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
5 Jun	32.4 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
6 Jun	33.4 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Jun	34.0 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Jun	33.3 °C	32 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
9 Jun	32.6 °C	31 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Jun	33.4 °C	38 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Jun	34.4 °C	38 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
12 Jun	34.6 °C	34 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
13 Jun	33.7 °C	33 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Jun	33.0 °C	41 %	64 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Jun	32.5 °C	44 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
16 Jun	32.4 °C	40 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
17 Jun	32.0 °C	47 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
18 Jun	33.6 °C	40 %	62 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Jun	34.1 °C	39 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
20 Jun	34.3 °C	41 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
21 Jun	34.5 °C	36 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
22 Jun	34.0 °C	34 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
23 Jun	33.9 °C	36 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Jun	33.0 °C	43 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Jun	27.7 °C	49 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
26 Jun	22.9 °C	54 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
27 Jun	28.7 °C	46 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 21
28 Jun	32.6 °C	39 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
29 Jun	23.2 °C	47 %	42 km/h	1.0 mm	Moderate 18
30 Jun	15.5 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 20
1 Jul	29.2 °C	40 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
2 Jul	33.2 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
3 Jul	34.5 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
4 Jul	34.4 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Jul after	32.1 °C	39 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Jul after	23.0 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Jul after	19.8 °C	48 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
8 Jul after	16.5 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 24
9 Jul after	15.0 °C	62 %	28 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 18
10 Jul after	17.9 °C	54 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
11 Jul after	22.9 °C	49 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 23
12 Jul after	15.4 °C	54 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
13 Jul after	19.3 °C	35 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
14 Jul after	21.3 °C	37 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 May 2024

After · 11 Jul 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 26 June 2024 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 44: 2.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak86 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10122 µg/m³

Optical depth0.77

WHO 15

2345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012

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 · 466Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 June 2024 to 4 July 2024 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 June 2024 to 29 June 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,533 hectares (65.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered San José (6,570 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 ›

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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 4 June 2024 to 29 June 2024. 466 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned