How long did the Altamira fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 July 2017 to 12 August 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2017 to 5 August 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,485 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Altamira (3,507 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-07-23 → 2017-08-12

Altamira fire, 23 July 2017 Altamira

Out · last detection 12 Aug 2017, 17:47 UTC

The fire started on 23 July 2017 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,485 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 878th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1100 with a page). Number 791 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 3,485ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 23 Jul 2017 – 12 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 23 Jul; 2017
Heat detections: 172; in a single hotspot: 384 MW
Danger at start: 37; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 162MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jul12 Aug

Play back 12 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jul 30 Jul 2 Aug 4 Aug 5 Aug 9 Aug 12 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

44km/h · peak gust

22%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 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?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Altamira 126,279 inhabitants where it started

3,507 ha reached on 23 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)
23 Jul	34.1 °C	37 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Jul	35.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
25 Jul	34.3 °C	31 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
26 Jul	34.5 °C	28 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
27 Jul	33.4 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
28 Jul	33.9 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Jul	33.9 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
30 Jul	34.6 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
31 Jul	34.3 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
1 Aug	35.3 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
2 Aug	35.6 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
3 Aug	36.8 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
4 Aug	36.8 °C	28 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
5 Aug	35.1 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 Aug	34.7 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
7 Aug	34.1 °C	42 %	42 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
8 Aug	34.7 °C	41 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Aug	35.5 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
10 Aug	35.5 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
11 Aug	35.0 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Aug	35.3 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 32
13 Aug after	35.2 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
14 Aug after	36.1 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Aug after	36.0 °C	34 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Aug after	35.5 °C	35 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
17 Aug after	34.1 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Aug after	36.2 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Aug after	36.7 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Aug after	36.3 °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
22 Aug after	34.5 °C	44 %	24 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jul 2017

After · 19 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 · 172Every 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 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 23 July 2017 to 12 August 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 July 2017 to 5 August 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,485 hectares (34.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Altamira (3,507 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 5 August 2017 → 12 August 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 30 July 2017 → 23 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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 30 July 2017 to 5 August 2017. 172 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.

Where it burned