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Altamira fire, 29 July 2021 Altamira, Itaituba

Out · last detection 13 Aug 2021, 04:58 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2021 in Altamira, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,194 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 399th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1114 with a page). Number 296 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Itaituba · 2026Itaituba · 2024Altamira · 2020Altamira · 2023

Burnt area
6,194ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
29 Jul 2021 – 13 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
29 Jul
2021
Heat detections
562
in a single hotspot: 276 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
515MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul13 Aug
13 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

29 Jul 2021 · 1,518 MW · 39 30 Jul 2021 · 3,496 MW · 210 31 Jul 2021 · 966 MW · 70 1 Aug 2021 · 61 MW · 5 2 Aug 2021 · 85 MW · 34 3 Aug 2021 · 22 MW · 10 4 Aug 2021 · 159 MW · 5 5 Aug 2021 · 320 MW · 17 6 Aug 2021 · 46 MW · 14 7 Aug 2021 · 316 MW · 29 8 Aug 2021 · 446 MW · 58 9 Aug 2021 · 510 MW · 29 10 Aug 2021 · 203 MW · 19 11 Aug 2021 · 24 MW · 9 12 Aug 2021 · 68 MW · 9 13 Aug 2021 · 6 MW · 5
29 Jul 30 Jul 1 Aug 4 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 13 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
40km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 188 ha in 2016, 364 ha in 2017, 1,796 ha in 2019, 2,037 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,274 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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
    4,460 ha reached on 29 Jul
    0.0 %
  2. Itaituba 123,314 inhabitants
    1,774 ha reached on 29 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)
29 Jul 34.2 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Jul 34.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Jul 35.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Aug 36.0 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Aug 35.4 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
3 Aug 35.7 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Aug 37.0 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
5 Aug 37.0 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Aug 36.0 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Aug 36.6 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Aug 35.9 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Aug 36.9 °C 25 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Aug 36.8 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Aug 37.3 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug 36.9 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Aug 35.1 °C 37 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug after 32.6 °C 44 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Aug after 34.3 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 28
16 Aug after 34.7 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Aug after 36.5 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug after 37.8 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Aug after 38.1 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Aug after 37.8 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Aug after 36.9 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Aug after 36.9 °C 26 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Aug after 37.9 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2021
After · 20 Aug 2021

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 · 562Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 July 2021 and 13 August 2021: 16 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,194 hectares (61.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Altamira (4,460 ha, 0.0 %); Itaituba (1,774 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 562 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.