How long did the Amarante do Maranhão fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2017 to 1 October 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2017 to 1 October 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,330 hectares (83.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Amarante do Maranhão (5,309 ha, 0.7 %); Grajaú (3,077 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-09-15 → 2017-10-01

Amarante do Maranhão fire, 15 September 2017 Amarante do Maranhão, Grajaú

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2017, 17:10 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2017 in Amarante do Maranhão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,330 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 88th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 231 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amarante do Maranhão · 2016 Grajaú · 2017 Amarante do Maranhão · 2016 Amarante do Maranhão · 2017

Burnt area: 8,330ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 15 Sept 2017 – 1 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 15 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 344; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 149MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept1 Oct

Play back 1 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 19 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 28 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

48km/h · peak gust

29%lowest humidity

It had gone 25 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 485 ha in 2016.

458 ha Amarante do Maranhão fire, August 2016 3,241 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.3% of the area of London (83 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

Amarante do Maranhão 37,085 inhabitants where it started

5,309 ha reached on 16 Sept

0.7 %
Grajaú 73,872 inhabitants

3,077 ha reached on 16 Sept

0.3 %

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 area1.6 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
15 Sept	36.6 °C	36 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Sept	36.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
17 Sept	36.2 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
18 Sept	36.4 °C	36 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Sept	37.3 °C	35 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
20 Sept	36.7 °C	38 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Sept	36.9 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
22 Sept	36.6 °C	33 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Sept	36.7 °C	33 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Sept	36.5 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
25 Sept	35.1 °C	39 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
26 Sept	37.5 °C	35 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
27 Sept	37.1 °C	35 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
28 Sept	37.8 °C	33 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
29 Sept	38.0 °C	34 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Sept	36.1 °C	36 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Oct	36.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Oct after	36.7 °C	40 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Oct after	37.5 °C	40 %	38 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
4 Oct after	37.8 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
5 Oct after	37.2 °C	34 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Oct after	37.9 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Oct after	36.5 °C	35 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
8 Oct after	36.1 °C	37 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Oct after	35.1 °C	44 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 31
10 Oct after	34.3 °C	47 %	37 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
11 Oct after	35.6 °C	46 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Sept 2017

After · 8 Oct 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 · 344Every 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 Amarante do Maranhão fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2017 to 1 October 2017 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2017 to 1 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,330 hectares (83.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Amarante do Maranhão (5,309 ha, 0.7 %); Grajaú (3,077 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 48 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 ›

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 Start date: 16 September 2017 → 15 September 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 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 16 September 2017 to 1 October 2017. 344 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