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BO · Bolivia · –

San José fire, 24 July 2024 San José

Out · last detection 7 Aug 2024, 06:04 UTC

The fire started on 24 July 2024 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,191 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 281th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 784 with a page). Number 110 in Bolivia in 2024, of 295.

Burnt area
7,191ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
24 Jul 2024 – 7 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
24 Jul
2024
Heat detections
702
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
315MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jul7 Aug
7 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jul 2024 · 5 MW · 1 25 Jul 2024 · 98 MW · 11 26 Jul 2024 · 282 MW · 25 27 Jul 2024 · 199 MW · 33 28 Jul 2024 · 265 MW · 32 29 Jul 2024 · 250 MW · 55 30 Jul 2024 · 54 MW · 13 31 Jul 2024 · 137 MW · 28 1 Aug 2024 · 190 MW · 40 2 Aug 2024 · 312 MW · 44 3 Aug 2024 · 877 MW · 130 4 Aug 2024 · 412 MW · 59 5 Aug 2024 · 847 MW · 139 6 Aug 2024 · 767 MW · 84 7 Aug 2024 · 35 MW · 8
24 Jul 27 Jul 30 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

35°high
70km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 8.8 mm on 8 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 190 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.5% of the area of London (72 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
    7,231 ha reached on 24 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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 1.5 % of the area in Bolivia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
24 Jul 33.6 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Jul 33.6 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Jul 33.6 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Jul 34.4 °C 25 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul 33.9 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Jul 27.8 °C 47 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jul 24.2 °C 53 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
31 Jul 32.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Aug 34.4 °C 27 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
2 Aug 34.4 °C 28 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
3 Aug 33.9 °C 31 % 70 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
4 Aug 32.1 °C 33 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 34.6 °C 29 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Aug 33.7 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
7 Aug 33.2 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 52
8 Aug after 22.3 °C 76 % 40 km/h 8.8 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jul 2024
After · 14 Aug 2024

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 30 July 2024 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³
Days over the guideline15 days
PM10204 µg/m³
Optical depth2.30
23 Jul27 Jul31 Jul4 Aug8 Aug
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 · 702Every 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 24 July 2024 to 7 August 2024 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2024 to 7 August 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,191 hectares (71.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San José (7,231 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 70 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 25 July 2024 → 24 July 2024.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 25 July 2024 to 7 August 2024. 702 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.