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San Rafael fire, 28 July 2019 San Rafael

Out · last detection 24 Aug 2019, 17:32 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2019 in San Rafael, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,259 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 125th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 836 with a page). Number 38 in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Rafael · 2024San Miguel · 2025San Rafael · 2019San José · 2024

Burnt area
17,259ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
28 Jul 2019 – 24 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Jul
2019
Heat detections
1,520
in a single hotspot: 369 MW
Danger at start
22
High · FWI index
Average daily power
766MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul24 Aug
24 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 2019 · 74 MW · 8 29 Jul 2019 · 6 MW · 3 30 Jul 2019 · 6 MW · 2 31 Jul 2019 · 19 MW · 7 1 Aug 2019 · 39 MW · 7 2 Aug 2019 · 66 MW · 18 3 Aug 2019 · 261 MW · 37 4 Aug 2019 · 742 MW · 75 5 Aug 2019 · 560 MW · 101 6 Aug 2019 · 622 MW · 94 7 Aug 2019 · 5,348 MW · 201 8 Aug 2019 · 585 MW · 131 9 Aug 2019 · 71 MW · 13 10 Aug 2019 · 685 MW · 38 11 Aug 2019 · 525 MW · 71 12 Aug 2019 · 365 MW · 83 13 Aug 2019 · 437 MW · 71 14 Aug 2019 · 1,116 MW · 56 15 Aug 2019 · 2,600 MW · 109 16 Aug 2019 · 5,369 MW · 119 17 Aug 2019 · 769 MW · 119 18 Aug 2019 · 247 MW · 102 19 Aug 2019 · 53 MW · 13 20 Aug 2019 · 49 MW · 12 22 Aug 2019 · 11 MW · 10 23 Aug 2019 · 15 MW · 8 24 Aug 2019 · 34 MW · 12
28 Jul 1 Aug 5 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 16 Aug 17 Aug 22 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

36°high
66km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.3 mm on 26 Aug.

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,198 ha in 2017, 4,117 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,332 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (173 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 Rafael 8,842 inhabitants where it started
    17,376 ha reached on 28 Jul
    1.8 %

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 area0.30 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.30 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
28 Jul 30.5 °C 41 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
29 Jul 32.0 °C 37 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Jul 32.2 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
31 Jul 33.5 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
1 Aug 34.0 °C 30 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Aug 24.3 °C 29 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Aug 22.6 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Aug 24.3 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Aug 27.6 °C 31 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
6 Aug 32.0 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Aug 34.3 °C 33 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Aug 34.2 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
9 Aug 33.5 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Aug 27.5 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Aug 33.9 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Aug 35.2 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Aug 26.8 °C 34 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Aug 25.1 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Aug 32.0 °C 33 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Aug 34.7 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Aug 35.0 °C 31 % 65 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Aug 34.0 °C 37 % 54 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
19 Aug 29.8 °C 42 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
20 Aug 30.8 °C 39 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
21 Aug 33.1 °C 37 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Aug 35.7 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
23 Aug 31.5 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.2 mm High 34
24 Aug 35.4 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
25 Aug after 35.0 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
26 Aug after 31.5 °C 55 % 39 km/h 11.3 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2019
After · 31 Aug 2019

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 · 1,520Every 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 Rafael fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 July 2019 and 24 August 2019: 28 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,259 hectares (172.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered San Rafael (17,376 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 66 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, 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 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,520 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.