How long did the Arraias fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2021 to 13 September 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2021 to 12 September 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,934 hectares (89.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arraias (7,318 ha, 1.2 %); Paranã (1,661 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.

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 · 2021-09-06 → 2021-09-13

Arraias fire, 6 September 2021 Arraias, Paranã

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2021, 16:12 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2021 in Arraias, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,934 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 255th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 184 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Arraias · 2016 Arraias · 2018 Arraias · 2019 Arraias · 2016

Burnt area: 8,934ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 6 Sept 2021 – 13 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 6 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 280; in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 410MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept13 Sept

Play back 13 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 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

39°high

42km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.5 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,951 ha in 2016, 415 ha in 2017, 3,201 ha in 2018, 1,128 ha in 2019, 1,272 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,980 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (89 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

Arraias 10,287 inhabitants where it started

7,318 ha reached on 6 Sept

1.2 %
Paranã 10,542 inhabitants

1,661 ha reached on 8 Sept

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 area0.31 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
6 Sept	37.9 °C	21 %	14 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Sept	36.7 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Sept	37.6 °C	11 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Sept	37.7 °C	13 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
10 Sept	38.0 °C	18 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
11 Sept	38.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
12 Sept	37.8 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
13 Sept	36.7 °C	18 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
14 Sept after	37.1 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
15 Sept after	38.2 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
16 Sept after	38.1 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
17 Sept after	36.5 °C	11 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
18 Sept after	36.4 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
19 Sept after	38.7 °C	12 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
20 Sept after	39.3 °C	11 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Sept after	38.8 °C	17 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Sept after	39.5 °C	21 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Sept after	35.3 °C	35 %	34 km/h	3.5 mm	Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Aug 2021

After · 20 Sept 2021

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 · 280Every 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 Arraias fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2021 to 13 September 2021 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2021 to 12 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,934 hectares (89.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Arraias (7,318 ha, 1.2 %); Paranã (1,661 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, class Extreme.
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 Last day with fire: 12 September 2021 → 13 September 2021.

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 6 September 2021 to 12 September 2021. 280 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.

Where it burned