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Urubichá fire, 2 September 2022 Ascención de Guarayos, Urubichá

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2022, 05:14 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2022 in Urubichá, Bolivia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,978 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 244th largest in Santa Cruz since 2016 (of 837 with a page). Number 56 in Bolivia in 2022, of 222.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Urubichá · 2022El Puente · 2020

Burnt area
8,978ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
2 Sept 2022 – 28 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
2 Sept
2022
Heat detections
543
in a single hotspot: 109 MW
Danger at start
24
High · FWI index
Average daily power
176MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept28 Sept
27 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 4 Sept 2022 · 42 MW · 10 5 Sept 2022 · 582 MW · 44 6 Sept 2022 · 232 MW · 54 7 Sept 2022 · 121 MW · 17 8 Sept 2022 · 155 MW · 20 9 Sept 2022 · 202 MW · 11 10 Sept 2022 · 515 MW · 44 11 Sept 2022 · 535 MW · 120 12 Sept 2022 · 15 MW · 4 13 Sept 2022 · 26 MW · 6 15 Sept 2022 · 184 MW · 18 16 Sept 2022 · 7 MW · 2 17 Sept 2022 · 540 MW · 51 18 Sept 2022 · 318 MW · 33 19 Sept 2022 · 73 MW · 17 20 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 1 21 Sept 2022 · 115 MW · 23 23 Sept 2022 · 5 MW · 1 24 Sept 2022 · 67 MW · 7 25 Sept 2022 · 125 MW · 13 26 Sept 2022 · 144 MW · 24 27 Sept 2022 · 22 MW · 22
2 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 16 Sept 20 Sept 25 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

36°high
56km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 5 Oct.

This area had burned before

15% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 196 ha in 2016, 350 ha in 2017, 1,227 ha in 2020, 3 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,320 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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. Ascención de Guarayos 31,577 inhabitants
    4,831 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.5 %
  2. Urubichá 6,555 inhabitants where it started
    4,232 ha reached on 2 Sept
    0.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
2 Sept 32.1 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
3 Sept 28.3 °C 35 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
4 Sept 29.1 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
5 Sept 30.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
6 Sept 32.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
7 Sept 34.3 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
8 Sept 34.2 °C 38 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Sept 34.5 °C 36 % 42 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
10 Sept 26.0 °C 36 % 43 km/h 2.5 mm Low 10
11 Sept 31.4 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
12 Sept 32.9 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 18
13 Sept 30.8 °C 50 % 36 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 14
14 Sept 22.7 °C 42 % 50 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 13
15 Sept 25.2 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
16 Sept 31.6 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
17 Sept 34.4 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Sept 35.8 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
19 Sept 35.3 °C 41 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Sept 33.7 °C 51 % 45 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 15
21 Sept 34.4 °C 43 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
22 Sept 26.9 °C 62 % 53 km/h 0.2 mm High 23
23 Sept 27.8 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Sept 33.8 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Sept 35.5 °C 36 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
26 Sept 35.9 °C 40 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Sept 34.7 °C 43 % 44 km/h 0.1 mm High 29
28 Sept 30.8 °C 55 % 53 km/h 5.9 mm Low 6
29 Sept after 21.2 °C 60 % 57 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
30 Sept after 27.1 °C 54 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
1 Oct after 33.5 °C 38 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
2 Oct after 34.6 °C 38 % 24 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
3 Oct after 35.1 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
4 Oct after 35.0 °C 45 % 39 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 21
5 Oct after 34.2 °C 45 % 52 km/h 1.7 mm Moderate 17

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2022
After · 5 Oct 2022

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 12 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 163 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 127: 8.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak163 µg/m³
Days over the guideline25 days
PM10234 µg/m³
Optical depth3.06
311234567891011121314151617181920212223242526
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 · 543Every 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 Urubichá fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 September 2022 to 28 September 2022 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2022 to 23 September 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,978 hectares (89.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ascención de Guarayos (4,831 ha, 0.5 %); Urubichá (4,232 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 32, class 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 September 2022 → 28 September 2022.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2022 to 23 September 2022. 543 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.