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Apiacás fire, July 2019 Apiacás

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2019, 16:44 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2019 in Apiacás, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,309 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1305th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 575 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apiacás · 2021Apiacás · 2024Apiacás · 2024Apiacás · 2023

Burnt area
4,309ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
31 Jul 2019 – 15 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Jul
2019
Heat detections
355
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
210MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul15 Aug
16 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 2019 · 44 MW · 4 1 Aug 2019 · 101 MW · 6 2 Aug 2019 · 112 MW · 15 3 Aug 2019 · 32 MW · 5 4 Aug 2019 · 19 MW · 2 5 Aug 2019 · 108 MW · 5 6 Aug 2019 · 489 MW · 24 7 Aug 2019 · 299 MW · 24 8 Aug 2019 · 195 MW · 38 9 Aug 2019 · 95 MW · 15 10 Aug 2019 · 44 MW · 5 11 Aug 2019 · 67 MW · 12 12 Aug 2019 · 1,139 MW · 78 13 Aug 2019 · 631 MW · 86 14 Aug 2019 · 179 MW · 29 15 Aug 2019 · 13 MW · 2 16 Aug 2019 · 7 MW · 1
31 Jul 3 Aug 6 Aug 9 Aug 12 Aug 15 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

36°high
45km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,308 ha in 2017, 1,216 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,545 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (43 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. Apiacás 8,590 inhabitants where it started
    4,343 ha reached on 31 Jul
    0.2 %

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)
31 Jul 35.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Aug 35.4 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Aug 36.2 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Aug 30.2 °C 34 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Aug 30.0 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Aug 32.0 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
6 Aug 34.2 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Aug 34.1 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Aug 33.5 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug 34.0 °C 25 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Aug 34.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Aug 34.4 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Aug 35.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Aug 35.5 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Aug 33.5 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Aug 34.5 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Aug after 34.0 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug after 34.1 °C 27 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Aug after 33.9 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Aug after 35.0 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
20 Aug after 35.8 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Aug after 35.8 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Aug after 35.8 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
23 Aug after 37.2 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug after 33.9 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
25 Aug after 33.9 °C 37 % 33 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
26 Aug after 35.3 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
27 Aug after 34.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Aug after 36.4 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
29 Aug after 36.5 °C 21 % 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 · 24 Jul 2019
After · 22 Aug 2019

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 · 355Every 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 Apiacás fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 July 2019 and 15 August 2019: 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 4,309 hectares (43.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apiacás (4,343 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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. 355 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.