How long did the Altamira fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 July 2019 to 12 August 2019 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2019 to 5 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,363 hectares (73.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Altamira (4,862 ha, 0.0 %); São Félix do Xingu (2,545 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 2019-07-28 → 2019-08-12

Altamira fire, 28 July 2019 Altamira, São Félix do Xingu

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2019, 17:41 UTC

The fire started on 28 July 2019 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 327th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1100 with a page). Number 267 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Altamira · 2017 São Félix do Xingu · 2020 São Félix do Xingu · 2021 São Félix do Xingu · 2023

Burnt area: 7,363ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 28 Jul 2019 – 12 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 28 Jul; 2019
Heat detections: 628; in a single hotspot: 192 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 658MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jul12 Aug

Play back 13 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jul 31 Jul 3 Aug 8 Aug 11 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

35°high

48km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

66% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,401 ha in 2016, 5,025 ha in 2017, 1,024 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,875 ha that had burned before.

2,245 ha Altamira fire, July 2017 3,021 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 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

4,862 ha reached on 28 Jul

0.0 %
São Félix do Xingu 65,418 inhabitants

2,545 ha reached on 30 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 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)
28 Jul	33.2 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Jul	33.9 °C	34 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
30 Jul	34.4 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
31 Jul	34.5 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
1 Aug	35.2 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
2 Aug	34.6 °C	35 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
3 Aug	33.6 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Aug	33.2 °C	36 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
5 Aug	32.2 °C	42 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
6 Aug	32.9 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
7 Aug	33.3 °C	30 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Aug	33.0 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
9 Aug	34.6 °C	31 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
10 Aug	34.2 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Aug	34.3 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Aug	35.1 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Aug after	35.9 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
14 Aug after	35.4 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Aug after	33.2 °C	45 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
16 Aug after	34.3 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Aug after	33.8 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Aug after	33.8 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
19 Aug after	35.6 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
20 Aug after	35.0 °C	33 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
21 Aug after	33.6 °C	42 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
22 Aug after	33.9 °C	43 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Jul 2019

After · 19 Aug 2019

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 · 628Every 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 28 July 2019 to 12 August 2019 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 July 2019 to 5 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,363 hectares (73.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Altamira (4,862 ha, 0.0 %); São Félix do Xingu (2,545 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 · 1 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 2019 → 12 August 2019.

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?

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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 28 July 2019 to 5 August 2019. 628 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 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