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Apuí fire, 28 July 2022 Apuí

Out · last measured on 6 Aug 2022

The fire started on 28 July 2022 in Apuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,938 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 74th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 168 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Apuí · 2021Apuí · 2024Apuí · 2019

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
7,938ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
28 Jul 2022 – 6 Aug 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
28 Jul
2022
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

36°high
37km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

69% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,352 ha in 2019, 1,495 ha in 2020, 5,796 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,510 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5% of the area of London (79 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. Apuí 20,647 inhabitants where it started
    7,978 ha reached on 11 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 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 35.8 °C 28 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Jul 35.0 °C 28 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Jul 34.1 °C 31 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jul 34.3 °C 43 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 30
1 Aug 34.3 °C 44 % 24 km/h 0.7 mm High 23
2 Aug 34.4 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
3 Aug 34.0 °C 45 % 31 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
4 Aug 34.9 °C 46 % 31 km/h 0.3 mm High 27
5 Aug 35.3 °C 40 % 25 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 21
6 Aug 35.7 °C 39 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
7 Aug after 32.5 °C 52 % 27 km/h 1.6 mm Low 11
8 Aug after 32.2 °C 57 % 24 km/h 1.9 mm Low 7
9 Aug after 34.6 °C 45 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
10 Aug after 32.7 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
11 Aug after 33.4 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
12 Aug after 34.6 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Aug after 35.2 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
14 Aug after 32.9 °C 52 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm High 24
15 Aug after 33.6 °C 48 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
16 Aug after 35.3 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.2 mm High 27
17 Aug after 35.2 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
18 Aug after 35.3 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 26
19 Aug after 33.5 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
20 Aug after 31.5 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Aug after 34.5 °C 30 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Aug after 33.9 °C 36 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
23 Aug after 34.1 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Jul 2022
After · 13 Aug 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Apuí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 July 2022 and 6 August 2022: 10 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 7,938 hectares (79.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Apuí (7,978 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.