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Altamira fire, 19 July 2017 Altamira

Out · last detection 4 Aug 2017, 16:57 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2017 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,092 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1055th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1099 with a page). Number 954 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2020Altamira · 2021Altamira · 2024Altamira · 2020

Burnt area
3,092ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
19 Jul 2017 – 4 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Jul
2017
Heat detections
165
in a single hotspot: 135 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
172MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul4 Aug
4 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 2017 · 18 MW · 8 21 Jul 2017 · 220 MW · 5 22 Jul 2017 · 8 MW · 1 24 Jul 2017 · 7 MW · 1 26 Jul 2017 · 18 MW · 2 27 Jul 2017 · 420 MW · 25 28 Jul 2017 · 938 MW · 32 29 Jul 2017 · 229 MW · 29 30 Jul 2017 · 90 MW · 12 31 Jul 2017 · 10 MW · 3 1 Aug 2017 · 53 MW · 6 2 Aug 2017 · 58 MW · 10 3 Aug 2017 · 320 MW · 23 4 Aug 2017 · 26 MW · 8
19 Jul 22 Jul 26 Jul 28 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 3 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

37°high
45km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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
    3,112 ha reached on 19 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 area0.16 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 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)
19 Jul 34.7 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jul 35.4 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Jul 35.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
22 Jul 36.1 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Jul 34.7 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Jul 35.7 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Jul 34.9 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
26 Jul 35.0 °C 28 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Jul 34.0 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Jul 34.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Jul 34.5 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Jul 35.1 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Jul 34.9 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
1 Aug 35.8 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
2 Aug 36.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Aug 37.2 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Aug 37.2 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Aug after 35.7 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
6 Aug after 35.2 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Aug after 34.7 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Aug after 35.2 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Aug after 35.9 °C 35 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
10 Aug after 35.9 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Aug after 35.4 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Aug after 35.7 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Aug after 35.6 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Aug after 36.6 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Aug after 36.3 °C 33 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
16 Aug after 35.8 °C 35 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug after 34.3 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
18 Aug after 36.2 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Aug after 36.9 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Aug after 36.6 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Aug after 34.9 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2017
After · 11 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 · 165Every 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 19 July 2017 to 4 August 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 26 July 2017 to 4 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,092 hectares (30.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Altamira (3,112 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 26 July 2017 → 19 July 2017.

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 26 July 2017 to 4 August 2017. 165 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.