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Altamira fire, 15 July 2017 Altamira

Out · last detection 30 Jul 2017, 16:50 UTC

The fire started on 15 July 2017 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,021 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1088th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1098 with a page). Number 982 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2021São Félix do Xingu · 2020Altamira · 2024São Félix do Xingu · 2021

Burnt area
3,021ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
15 Jul 2017 – 30 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
15 Jul
2017
Heat detections
301
in a single hotspot: 504 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
548MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jul30 Jul
30 Jul 2017

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jul 2017 · 5,083 MW · 45 16 Jul 2017 · 728 MW · 55 17 Jul 2017 · 501 MW · 62 18 Jul 2017 · 467 MW · 34 19 Jul 2017 · 58 MW · 21 20 Jul 2017 · 35 MW · 7 21 Jul 2017 · 42 MW · 9 22 Jul 2017 · 189 MW · 17 23 Jul 2017 · 12 MW · 8 26 Jul 2017 · 4 MW · 1 27 Jul 2017 · 413 MW · 23 28 Jul 2017 · 20 MW · 9 29 Jul 2017 · 109 MW · 9 30 Jul 2017 · 5 MW · 1
15 Jul 17 Jul 19 Jul 21 Jul 23 Jul 27 Jul 29 Jul

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
44km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,460 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Altamira 126,279 inhabitants where it started
    3,041 ha reached on 15 Jul
    0.0 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
15 Jul 33.2 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jul 33.2 °C 29 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
17 Jul 34.2 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Jul 32.9 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
19 Jul 32.9 °C 34 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Jul 34.1 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Jul 34.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
22 Jul 34.9 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Jul 33.4 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
24 Jul 34.5 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Jul 33.7 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Jul 33.7 °C 29 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Jul 32.7 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Jul 33.1 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
29 Jul 33.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
30 Jul 33.8 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
31 Jul after 33.6 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Aug after 34.5 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Aug after 35.0 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug after 36.2 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
4 Aug after 36.1 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug after 34.6 °C 33 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 34.2 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Aug after 33.6 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.4 mm High 32
8 Aug after 33.9 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug after 34.7 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Jul 2017
After · 6 Aug 2017

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 · 301Every 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 Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Altamira fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 July 2017 to 30 July 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 July 2017 to 23 July 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,021 hectares (30.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Altamira (3,041 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Brazil (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: 193 · 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 193.

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 15 July 2017 to 23 July 2017. 301 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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.