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BO · Bolivia · –

San Matías fire, May 2026 San Matías

Out · last detection 14 Jun 2026, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 28 May 2026 in San Matías, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,491 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 44 in Bolivia in 2026, of 84.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in October 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
4,491ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
28 May 2026 – 14 Jun 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 May
2026
Heat detections
448
in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start
7
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
88MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 May14 Jun
14 Jun 2026

How it evolved, day by day

28 May 2026 · 120 MW · 42 29 May 2026 · 139 MW · 60 30 May 2026 · 118 MW · 37 31 May 2026 · 41 MW · 25 1 Jun 2026 · 15 MW · 5 2 Jun 2026 · 52 MW · 23 3 Jun 2026 · 49 MW · 25 4 Jun 2026 · 32 MW · 12 5 Jun 2026 · 226 MW · 46 6 Jun 2026 · 295 MW · 66 7 Jun 2026 · 101 MW · 62 8 Jun 2026 · 6 MW · 2 11 Jun 2026 · 35 MW · 6 13 Jun 2026 · 44 MW · 17 14 Jun 2026 · 42 MW · 20
28 May 31 May 3 Jun 6 Jun 11 Jun

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
47km/h · peak gust
39%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.4 mm on 19 Jun.

This area had burned before

100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,957 ha in 2019, 1,784 ha in 2021, 4,254 ha in 2022, 4,915 ha in 2023, 3,440 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,517 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 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 Matías 13,073 inhabitants where it started
    4,500 ha reached on 28 May
    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 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)
28 May 31.8 °C 61 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Low 7
29 May 32.4 °C 53 % 20 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
30 May 30.6 °C 55 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
31 May 30.9 °C 57 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
1 Jun 31.1 °C 57 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
2 Jun 31.5 °C 52 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
3 Jun 31.1 °C 49 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
4 Jun 30.7 °C 48 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Jun 32.0 °C 48 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
6 Jun 30.7 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
7 Jun 30.9 °C 39 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
8 Jun 31.1 °C 47 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
9 Jun 26.5 °C 62 % 21 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 11
10 Jun 26.6 °C 70 % 39 km/h 1.3 mm Very low 5
11 Jun 29.7 °C 57 % 43 km/h 2.0 mm Low 8
12 Jun 27.6 °C 69 % 25 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 2
13 Jun 32.7 °C 54 % 47 km/h 0.1 mm Low 10
14 Jun 29.9 °C 62 % 36 km/h 2.1 mm Low 7
15 Jun after 22.9 °C 72 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
16 Jun after 24.4 °C 65 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
17 Jun after 25.9 °C 68 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
18 Jun after 31.7 °C 54 % 30 km/h 0.1 mm Low 11
19 Jun after 25.5 °C 72 % 30 km/h 11.4 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 May 2026
After · 21 Jun 2026

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 7 June 2026 the air beside the fire reached 37 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak37 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1037 µg/m³
Optical depth0.31
2 Jun5 Jun8 Jun11 Jun
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 · 448Every 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 Matías fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 May 2026 to 14 June 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 4 June 2026 to 9 June 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,491 hectares (44.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Matías (4,500 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.7 °C, humidity dropped to 39 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, 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

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 June 2026 → 14 June 2026.
  2. Start date: 4 June 2026 → 28 May 2026.
  3. Last day with fire: 14 June 2026 → 9 June 2026.
  4. Start date: 28 May 2026 → 4 June 2026.
  5. Last day with fire: 9 June 2026 → 14 June 2026.
  6. Start date: 4 June 2026 → 28 May 2026.

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 4 June 2026 to 9 June 2026. 448 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.