How long did the Babaçulândia fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2017 to 29 September 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2017 to 23 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,198 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Darcinópolis (2,260 ha, 1.4 %); Babaçulândia (959 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 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.

BR · Brazil · 2017-09-19 → 2017-09-29

Babaçulândia fire, September 2017 Darcinópolis, Babaçulândia

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 16:45 UTC

The fire started on 19 September 2017 in Babaçulândia, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,198 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1138th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 896 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Babaçulândia · 2016 Babaçulândia · 2020 Babaçulândia · 2024 Wanderlândia · 2025

Burnt area: 3,198ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 19 Sept 2017 – 29 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 19 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 108; in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 139MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Sept29 Sept

Play back 27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

19 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 24 Sept 27 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

38°high

40km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 549 ha in 2016.

549 ha Babaçulândia fire, July 2016 3,534 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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

Darcinópolis 5,827 inhabitants

2,260 ha reached on 19 Sept

1.4 %
Babaçulândia 7,880 inhabitants where it started

959 ha reached on 19 Sept

0.5 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.45 ha

Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.45 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
19 Sept	38.3 °C	27 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Sept	37.8 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Sept	37.5 °C	26 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
22 Sept	36.7 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
23 Sept	36.4 °C	29 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
24 Sept	36.3 °C	29 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Sept	36.4 °C	31 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Sept	37.8 °C	26 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
27 Sept	37.4 °C	31 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
28 Sept	38.7 °C	28 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Sept	38.6 °C	25 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
30 Sept after	35.8 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
1 Oct after	35.9 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
2 Oct after	36.3 °C	38 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
3 Oct after	35.2 °C	38 %	26 km/h	0.1 mm	High 33
4 Oct after	37.3 °C	31 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
5 Oct after	37.9 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
6 Oct after	38.2 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
7 Oct after	35.9 °C	33 %	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 · 12 Sept 2017

After · 6 Oct 2017

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 · 108Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Babaçulândia fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 September 2017 to 29 September 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 September 2017 to 23 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,198 hectares (32.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Darcinópolis (2,260 ha, 1.4 %); Babaçulândia (959 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 40 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 ›

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: 23 September 2017 → 29 September 2017.

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.

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What really happened?

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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 19 September 2017 to 23 September 2017. 108 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 2015, 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