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San Rafael fire, 22 July 2019 San Matías, San Rafael, San Ignacio

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2019, 05:13 UTC

The fire started on 22 July 2019 in San Rafael, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 76 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 528,947 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 6th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 836 with a page). The largest in Bolivia in 2019, of 219.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Rafael · 2018San Matías · 2019

Burnt area
528,947ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
76days
22 Jul 2019 – 5 Oct 2019
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
22 Jul
2019
Heat detections
36,136
in a single hotspot: 867 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
4.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jul5 Oct
5 Oct 2019

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jul 2019 · 45 MW · 13 23 Jul 2019 · 256 MW · 17 24 Jul 2019 · 178 MW · 23 25 Jul 2019 · 52 MW · 14 26 Jul 2019 · 19 MW · 3 27 Jul 2019 · 45 MW · 11 28 Jul 2019 · 77 MW · 17 29 Jul 2019 · 319 MW · 30 30 Jul 2019 · 49 MW · 6 31 Jul 2019 · 178 MW · 14 1 Aug 2019 · 2,318 MW · 119 2 Aug 2019 · 1,803 MW · 280 3 Aug 2019 · 1,177 MW · 248 4 Aug 2019 · 1,244 MW · 221 5 Aug 2019 · 1,042 MW · 186 6 Aug 2019 · 2,074 MW · 263 7 Aug 2019 · 3,071 MW · 437 8 Aug 2019 · 4,315 MW · 479 9 Aug 2019 · 3,803 MW · 333 10 Aug 2019 · 1,404 MW · 246 11 Aug 2019 · 5,715 MW · 462 12 Aug 2019 · 11,826 MW · 1254 13 Aug 2019 · 9,532 MW · 1548 14 Aug 2019 · 18,582 MW · 1825 15 Aug 2019 · 13,901 MW · 1132 16 Aug 2019 · 20,564 MW · 798 17 Aug 2019 · 14,164 MW · 1698 18 Aug 2019 · 9,053 MW · 1975 19 Aug 2019 · 6,301 MW · 984 20 Aug 2019 · 4,421 MW · 571 21 Aug 2019 · 4,222 MW · 478 22 Aug 2019 · 4,787 MW · 620 23 Aug 2019 · 4,334 MW · 557 24 Aug 2019 · 13,487 MW · 1802 25 Aug 2019 · 8,269 MW · 673 26 Aug 2019 · 3,427 MW · 265 27 Aug 2019 · 50 MW · 5 28 Aug 2019 · 293 MW · 35 29 Aug 2019 · 3,241 MW · 141 30 Aug 2019 · 2,321 MW · 230 31 Aug 2019 · 4,078 MW · 225 1 Sept 2019 · 244 MW · 29 2 Sept 2019 · 840 MW · 74 3 Sept 2019 · 488 MW · 85 4 Sept 2019 · 1,336 MW · 284 5 Sept 2019 · 535 MW · 55 6 Sept 2019 · 5,132 MW · 299 7 Sept 2019 · 6,616 MW · 816 8 Sept 2019 · 10,070 MW · 1300 9 Sept 2019 · 25,908 MW · 2240 10 Sept 2019 · 10,585 MW · 1408 11 Sept 2019 · 1,470 MW · 180 12 Sept 2019 · 558 MW · 81 13 Sept 2019 · 2,665 MW · 491 14 Sept 2019 · 4,588 MW · 888 15 Sept 2019 · 26,934 MW · 1443 16 Sept 2019 · 9,478 MW · 984 17 Sept 2019 · 2,851 MW · 417 18 Sept 2019 · 785 MW · 312 19 Sept 2019 · 4,182 MW · 632 20 Sept 2019 · 2,678 MW · 415 21 Sept 2019 · 2,350 MW · 334 22 Sept 2019 · 4,063 MW · 398 23 Sept 2019 · 5,694 MW · 954 24 Sept 2019 · 3,761 MW · 980 25 Sept 2019 · 11 MW · 3 26 Sept 2019 · 11 MW · 2 27 Sept 2019 · 108 MW · 20 28 Sept 2019 · 69 MW · 16 29 Sept 2019 · 794 MW · 104 30 Sept 2019 · 5,456 MW · 485 1 Oct 2019 · 376 MW · 90 3 Oct 2019 · 126 MW · 10 4 Oct 2019 · 170 MW · 35 5 Oct 2019 · 49 MW · 34
22 Jul 2 Aug 13 Aug 24 Aug 4 Sept 15 Sept 26 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high
59km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 8 Oct.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,462 ha in 2016, 7,683 ha in 2017, 14,813 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 22,838 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.3 times the area of London (5,289 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
    350,049 ha reached on 22 Jul
    13 %
  2. San Rafael 8,842 inhabitants where it started
    157,188 ha reached on 22 Jul
    16 %
  3. San Ignacio 56,702 inhabitants
    23,812 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.5 %

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 area12 ha
Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 12 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 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)
22 Jul 35.6 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Jul 36.1 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
24 Jul 28.2 °C 39 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Jul 21.4 °C 48 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
26 Jul 25.3 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
27 Jul 28.4 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Jul 31.5 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Jul 34.7 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Jul 35.8 °C 32 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
31 Jul 35.5 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Aug 36.7 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Aug 25.7 °C 34 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Aug 23.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Aug 25.9 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Aug 29.1 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Aug 33.7 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Aug 36.9 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Aug 36.6 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Aug 36.2 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Aug 30.3 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
11 Aug 36.2 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Aug 37.8 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Aug 30.7 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Aug 27.1 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Aug 32.9 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Aug 36.8 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Aug 37.4 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Aug 36.7 °C 36 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug 32.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
20 Aug 32.0 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
21 Aug 34.9 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Aug 37.5 °C 33 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Aug 34.6 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug 37.5 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Aug 38.1 °C 28 % 35 km/h 1.1 mm High 37
26 Aug 35.0 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Aug 32.0 °C 47 % 32 km/h 1.2 mm Moderate 19
28 Aug 36.6 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
29 Aug 38.1 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Aug 39.3 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
31 Aug 39.6 °C 27 % 44 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 40
1 Sept 31.0 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Sept 34.4 °C 39 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 36.6 °C 36 % 29 km/h 0.7 mm High 28
4 Sept 37.0 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Sept 37.3 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Sept 38.9 °C 30 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 40.3 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Sept 40.5 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 40.6 °C 21 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Sept 40.0 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Sept 39.8 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 31.1 °C 39 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Sept 33.3 °C 40 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept 38.7 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Sept 40.7 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept 41.1 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Sept 37.5 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 40.0 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Sept 39.2 °C 32 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Sept 40.5 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 48
21 Sept 35.5 °C 36 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept 37.3 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
23 Sept 39.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 39.7 °C 33 % 36 km/h 2.8 mm High 24
25 Sept 32.0 °C 46 % 36 km/h 10.9 mm Low 6
26 Sept 32.3 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 14
27 Sept 35.1 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
28 Sept 36.9 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Sept 39.2 °C 34 % 29 km/h 1.0 mm High 26
30 Sept 39.9 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
1 Oct 37.3 °C 38 % 55 km/h 1.5 mm High 27
2 Oct 32.6 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
3 Oct 37.0 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
4 Oct 37.8 °C 30 % 28 km/h 1.1 mm High 26
5 Oct 31.3 °C 53 % 32 km/h 22.7 mm Very low 3
6 Oct after 24.0 °C 65 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
7 Oct after 28.6 °C 56 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
8 Oct after 32.3 °C 53 % 26 km/h 2.5 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 15 Jul 2019
After · 12 Oct 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 · 36,136Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 July 2019 to 5 October 2019 (76 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2019 to 1 October 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 528,947 hectares (5,289.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: San Matías (350,049 ha, 13 %); San Rafael (157,188 ha, 16 %); San Ignacio (23,812 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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; 13 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 July 2019 to 1 October 2019. 36,136 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.