How long did the Apiacás fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2024 to 12 September 2024 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2024 to 12 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,214 hectares (42.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Apiacás (4,249 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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 · 2024-08-26 → 2024-09-12

Apiacás fire, 26 August 2024 Apiacás

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2024, 17:22 UTC

The fire started on 26 August 2024 in Apiacás, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,214 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1330th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 848 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apiacás · 2020 Apiacás · 2022 Apiacás · 2024 Paranaíta · 2020

Burnt area: 4,214ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 26 Aug 2024 – 12 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 26 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 267; in a single hotspot: 233 MW
Danger at start: 35; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 220MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Aug12 Sept

Play back 12 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

26 Aug 31 Aug 2 Sept 3 Sept 6 Sept 10 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

37°high

35km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 552 ha in 2017, 1,246 ha in 2018, 2,811 ha in 2019, 3,578 ha in 2020, 1,575 ha in 2021, 307 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,093 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

Apiacás 8,590 inhabitants where it started

4,249 ha reached on 26 Aug

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 2025

Built-up area0.22 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
26 Aug	30.4 °C	38 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
27 Aug	33.7 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
28 Aug	36.4 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
29 Aug	34.3 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
30 Aug	34.4 °C	26 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Aug	35.0 °C	28 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Sept	36.5 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 Sept	36.2 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Sept	34.3 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
4 Sept	36.1 °C	22 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
5 Sept	37.4 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
6 Sept	35.4 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
7 Sept	34.0 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
8 Sept	35.7 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
9 Sept	35.0 °C	30 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
10 Sept	35.1 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
11 Sept	35.3 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
12 Sept	35.3 °C	34 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Sept after	35.6 °C	32 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
14 Sept after	35.5 °C	31 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
15 Sept after	33.9 °C	37 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Sept after	33.8 °C	43 %	18 km/h	0.1 mm	High 28
17 Sept after	36.2 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
18 Sept after	33.3 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
19 Sept after	32.1 °C	46 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
20 Sept after	36.1 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Sept after	34.6 °C	39 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
22 Sept after	34.2 °C	41 %	25 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 · 19 Aug 2024

After · 19 Sept 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 4 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 423 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 243: 16 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak423 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10604 µg/m³

Optical depth3.38

WHO 15

293031123456789101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 267Every 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 Apiacás fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 August 2024 to 12 September 2024 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2024 to 12 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,214 hectares (42.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Apiacás (4,249 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, 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: 31 August 2024 → 26 August 2024.

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?

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 August 2024 to 12 September 2024. 267 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 2025, 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