How long did the San José fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 June 2026 to 21 July 2026 (35 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 June 2026 to 14 July 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,667 hectares (56.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: San José (4,301 ha, 0.2 %); San Matías (1,394 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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 · 2026-06-17 → 2026-07-21

San José fire, June 2026 San José, San Matías

Out · last detection 22 Jul 2026, 04:46 UTC

The fire started on 17 June 2026 in San José, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 35 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,667 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 394th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 836 with a page). Number 23 in Bolivia in 2026, of 73.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San José · 2024 San José · 2026 San José · 2026 San José · 2024

Burnt area: 5,667ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 35days; 17 Jun 2026 – 21 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 17 Jun; 2026
Heat detections: 527; in a single hotspot: 403 MW
Danger at start: 4; Very low · FWI index
Average daily power: 322MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jun21 Jul

Play back 22 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jun 22 Jun 28 Jun 2 Jul 7 Jul 17 Jul 21 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

75km/h · peak gust

44%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,963 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,897 ha that had burned before.

327 ha San José fire, July 2024 551,706 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.6% of the area of London (57 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

4,301 ha reached on 18 Jun

0.2 %
San Matías 13,073 inhabitants

1,394 ha reached on 18 Jun

0.0 %

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)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
17 Jun	24.9 °C	68 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 4
18 Jun	29.6 °C	58 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
19 Jun	24.3 °C	69 %	47 km/h	10.2 mm	Very low 0
20 Jun	24.1 °C	56 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 1
21 Jun	28.8 °C	59 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 5
22 Jun	27.1 °C	65 %	54 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 2
23 Jun	17.1 °C	73 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	Very low 3
24 Jun	16.2 °C	69 %	30 km/h	2.3 mm	Very low 1
25 Jun	20.3 °C	68 %	23 km/h	1.6 mm	Very low 1
26 Jun	25.8 °C	59 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 2
27 Jun	30.3 °C	51 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 6
28 Jun	32.1 °C	44 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
29 Jun	30.1 °C	54 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
30 Jun	29.2 °C	61 %	35 km/h	0.2 mm	Low 9
1 Jul	32.7 °C	46 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
2 Jul	21.7 °C	67 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 10
3 Jul	17.7 °C	67 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
4 Jul	19.8 °C	64 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	Low 6
5 Jul	25.8 °C	59 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
6 Jul	19.8 °C	69 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 7
7 Jul	23.4 °C	59 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
8 Jul	27.9 °C	57 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 9
9 Jul	31.8 °C	53 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 11
10 Jul	32.4 °C	50 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
11 Jul	31.5 °C	49 %	42 km/h	0.8 mm	Low 10
12 Jul	22.9 °C	81 %	27 km/h	4.1 mm	Very low 0
13 Jul	28.8 °C	51 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very low 3
14 Jul	29.9 °C	50 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
15 Jul	32.0 °C	51 %	48 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 13
16 Jul	33.2 °C	50 %	57 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
17 Jul	32.7 °C	54 %	66 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 18
18 Jul	31.9 °C	56 %	75 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
19 Jul	32.1 °C	53 %	70 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 18
20 Jul	33.6 °C	52 %	65 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 18
21 Jul	33.5 °C	49 %	54 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 17
22 Jul after	30.9 °C	54 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	Moderate 16
23 Jul after	24.4 °C	62 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
24 Jul after	31.4 °C	55 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
25 Jul after	31.3 °C	47 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 14
26 Jul after	33.7 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
27 Jul after	35.9 °C	38 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
28 Jul after	35.6 °C	38 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
29 Jul after	34.2 °C	46 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
30 Jul after	35.3 °C	45 %	40 km/h	0.2 mm	High 23
31 Jul after	35.4 °C	41 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Jun 2026

After · 28 Jul 2026

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 23 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 132 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 55: 3.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak132 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10136 µg/m³

Optical depth1.38

WHO 15

9101112131415161718192021222324252627282930123456789101112131415161718192021222324

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 · 527Every 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 17 June 2026 to 21 July 2026 (35 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 June 2026 to 14 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,667 hectares (56.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: San José (4,301 ha, 0.2 %); San Matías (1,394 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 33.6 °C, humidity dropped to 44 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Viceministerio de Defensa Civil ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 14 July 2026 → 21 July 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 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 June 2026 to 14 July 2026. 527 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