How long did the San Ramón fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 July 2017 to 13 August 2017 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2017 to 13 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,989 hectares (159.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Ramón (11,742 ha, 1.5 %); San Javier (4,374 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.

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 · 18 Jul 2017 – 13 Aug 2017

San Ramón fire, 18 July 2017 San Ramón, San Javier

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2017, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 18 July 2017 in San Ramón, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,989 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 76th largest in Beni since 2016 (of 908 with a page). Number 9 in Bolivia in 2017, of 123.

Compare with…

Suggestions: San Ramón · 2021 Huacaraje · 2023 San Ramón · 2024

Burnt area: 15,989ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 18 Jul 2017 – 13 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 18 Jul; 2017
Heat detections: 788; in a single hotspot: 147 MW
Danger at start: 27; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 362MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jul13 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jul 25 Jul 29 Jul 4 Aug 9 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

59km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.4 mm on 15 Aug.

This area had burned before

24% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,825 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (160 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 Ramón 5,489 inhabitants where it started

11,742 ha reached on 18 Jul

1.5 %
San Javier 7,913 inhabitants

4,374 ha reached on 31 Jul

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 2015

Built-up area0.14 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
18 Jul	21.4 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
19 Jul	24.4 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
20 Jul	28.0 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
21 Jul	30.3 °C	38 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
22 Jul	31.8 °C	41 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 21
23 Jul	33.5 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
24 Jul	34.3 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
25 Jul	35.1 °C	40 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
26 Jul	35.0 °C	37 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
27 Jul	34.5 °C	31 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
28 Jul	34.4 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
29 Jul	33.8 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
30 Jul	33.8 °C	36 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Jul	34.3 °C	33 %	15 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
1 Aug	34.0 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
2 Aug	34.1 °C	37 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Aug	26.9 °C	40 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
4 Aug	30.8 °C	45 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
5 Aug	32.8 °C	43 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
6 Aug	34.4 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
7 Aug	35.4 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Aug	36.1 °C	38 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
9 Aug	35.8 °C	41 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
10 Aug	35.4 °C	44 %	46 km/h	1.7 mm	High 22
11 Aug	34.5 °C	52 %	53 km/h	3.5 mm	Low 11
12 Aug	34.7 °C	48 %	59 km/h	1.4 mm	Moderate 18
13 Aug	33.0 °C	55 %	42 km/h	9.6 mm	Very low 4
14 Aug after	31.8 °C	57 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
15 Aug after	30.1 °C	68 %	31 km/h	10.4 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Jul 2017

After · 20 Aug 2017

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.

Detections table · 788Every 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 Ramón fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 July 2017 to 13 August 2017 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 July 2017 to 13 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,989 hectares (159.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: San Ramón (11,742 ha, 1.5 %); San Javier (4,374 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, class Very high.
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 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 July 2017 to 13 August 2017. 788 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 2015, 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