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Arraias fire, 11 August 2019 Arraias

Out · last detection 4 Sept 2019, 17:27 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2019 in Arraias, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,809 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 96th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 80 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Arraias · 2017Arraias · 2017Arraias · 2021Arraias · 2019

Burnt area
15,809ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
11 Aug 2019 – 4 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Aug
2019
Heat detections
574
in a single hotspot: 199 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
151MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug4 Sept
4 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2019 · 442 MW · 33 12 Aug 2019 · 696 MW · 133 13 Aug 2019 · 402 MW · 68 14 Aug 2019 · 304 MW · 69 15 Aug 2019 · 102 MW · 42 16 Aug 2019 · 212 MW · 44 17 Aug 2019 · 82 MW · 17 18 Aug 2019 · 20 MW · 3 19 Aug 2019 · 230 MW · 17 20 Aug 2019 · 74 MW · 19 21 Aug 2019 · 75 MW · 6 22 Aug 2019 · 35 MW · 4 23 Aug 2019 · 574 MW · 16 24 Aug 2019 · 170 MW · 21 25 Aug 2019 · 23 MW · 14 26 Aug 2019 · 100 MW · 14 27 Aug 2019 · 13 MW · 6 28 Aug 2019 · 19 MW · 5 29 Aug 2019 · 8 MW · 2 30 Aug 2019 · 7 MW · 3 31 Aug 2019 · 26 MW · 3 1 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 2 2 Sept 2019 · 6 MW · 1 3 Sept 2019 · 147 MW · 30 4 Sept 2019 · 5 MW · 2
11 Aug 12 Aug 15 Aug 19 Aug 23 Aug 27 Aug 31 Aug 4 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
49km/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

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,702 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (158 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. Arraias 10,287 inhabitants where it started
    15,917 ha reached on 11 Aug
    2.7 %

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 area0.17 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of 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)
11 Aug 33.3 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Aug 33.8 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Aug 33.4 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug 33.5 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
15 Aug 32.5 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Aug 31.7 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Aug 31.7 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Aug 33.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
19 Aug 35.3 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Aug 35.7 °C 21 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
21 Aug 35.9 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Aug 35.6 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
23 Aug 34.8 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Aug 34.2 °C 29 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
25 Aug 34.5 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug 33.1 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Aug 32.8 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
28 Aug 33.5 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
29 Aug 33.9 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Aug 34.2 °C 28 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
31 Aug 35.2 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
1 Sept 35.9 °C 24 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Sept 36.7 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 37.2 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Sept 36.5 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept after 36.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept after 35.4 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept after 35.5 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Sept after 34.8 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept after 35.2 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept after 36.1 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept after 36.5 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Sept after 36.9 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
13 Sept after 38.3 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Sept after 37.7 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Aug 2019
After · 11 Sept 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 · 574Every 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 Arraias fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 August 2019 to 4 September 2019 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2019 to 3 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 15,809 hectares (158.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Arraias (15,917 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 3 September 2019 → 4 September 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2019 to 3 September 2019. 574 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.