How long did the Altamira fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 August 2017 to 21 September 2017 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2017 to 19 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,960 hectares (89.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Altamira (9,055 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 2017-08-24 → 2017-09-21

Altamira fire, 24 August 2017 Altamira

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 16:57 UTC

The fire started on 24 August 2017 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,960 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 258th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1101 with a page). Number 207 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2016 Altamira · 2022 Altamira · 2021 Altamira · 2020

Burnt area: 8,960ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 29days; 24 Aug 2017 – 21 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 24 Aug; 2017
Heat detections: 654; in a single hotspot: 102 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 248MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Aug21 Sept

Play back 21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

24 Aug 28 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 19 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

38°high

41km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.9 mm on 25 Sept.

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,254 ha in 2016.

2,988 ha Altamira fire, August 2016 4,057 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

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

Altamira 126,279 inhabitants where it started

9,055 ha reached on 24 Aug

0.1 %

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 area0.70 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.70 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
24 Aug	35.3 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
25 Aug	36.9 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
26 Aug	36.8 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
27 Aug	37.0 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Aug	37.8 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Aug	35.7 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
30 Aug	36.6 °C	29 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
31 Aug	36.7 °C	25 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
1 Sept	36.5 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept	35.7 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
3 Sept	36.8 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
4 Sept	35.8 °C	22 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Sept	36.3 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Sept	36.9 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Sept	37.5 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
8 Sept	36.8 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Sept	35.8 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Sept	37.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Sept	38.2 °C	25 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
12 Sept	37.5 °C	22 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
13 Sept	36.0 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Sept	36.6 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
15 Sept	36.6 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
16 Sept	38.0 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
17 Sept	35.9 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Sept	36.8 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Sept	36.3 °C	27 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
20 Sept	35.9 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
21 Sept	33.0 °C	44 %	34 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
22 Sept after	36.4 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Sept after	34.9 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
24 Sept after	35.4 °C	36 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
25 Sept after	35.3 °C	37 %	27 km/h	7.9 mm	Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Aug 2017

After · 28 Sept 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 · 654Every 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 24 August 2017 to 21 September 2017 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2017 to 19 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,960 hectares (89.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Altamira (9,055 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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: 19 September 2017 → 21 September 2017.
25 October 2026 Start date: 29 August 2017 → 24 August 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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 August 2017 to 19 September 2017. 654 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