How long did the Balsas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 August 2019 to 20 August 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2019 to 19 August 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,662 hectares (76.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Balsas (7,716 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 54 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 · 2019-08-06 → 2019-08-20

Balsas fire, August 2019 Balsas

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2019, 17:09 UTC

The fire started on 6 August 2019 in Balsas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,662 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 110th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 254 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balsas · 2022 Balsas · 2025 Balsas · 2025 Balsas · 2022

Burnt area: 7,662ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 6 Aug 2019 – 20 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 6 Aug; 2019
Heat detections: 225; in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 127MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Aug20 Aug

Play back 20 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Aug 9 Aug 11 Aug 13 Aug 15 Aug 17 Aug 19 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high

54km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 700 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (77 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

Balsas 101,767 inhabitants where it started

7,716 ha reached on 7 Aug

0.6 %

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	Danger (FWI)
6 Aug	31.3 °C	38 %	52 km/h	Very high 42
7 Aug	32.7 °C	35 %	48 km/h	Very high 38
8 Aug	33.1 °C	36 %	43 km/h	High 37
9 Aug	33.3 °C	34 %	40 km/h	High 37
10 Aug	33.0 °C	31 %	40 km/h	High 36
11 Aug	34.2 °C	31 %	42 km/h	High 38
12 Aug	34.6 °C	33 %	40 km/h	High 38
13 Aug	34.6 °C	33 %	38 km/h	High 37
14 Aug	34.8 °C	33 %	37 km/h	High 37
15 Aug	34.1 °C	30 %	47 km/h	Very high 41
16 Aug	33.1 °C	33 %	54 km/h	Very high 45
17 Aug	33.3 °C	36 %	45 km/h	Very high 42
18 Aug	33.7 °C	33 %	39 km/h	High 38
19 Aug	35.1 °C	26 %	30 km/h	High 37
20 Aug	35.6 °C	33 %	34 km/h	Very high 38
21 Aug after	35.2 °C	36 %	35 km/h	High 37
22 Aug after	34.7 °C	36 %	31 km/h	High 36
23 Aug after	35.0 °C	30 %	36 km/h	Very high 38
24 Aug after	35.3 °C	25 %	35 km/h	Very high 40
25 Aug after	34.9 °C	27 %	38 km/h	Very high 42
26 Aug after	34.4 °C	29 %	44 km/h	Very high 46
27 Aug after	34.1 °C	30 %	45 km/h	Very high 47
28 Aug after	34.4 °C	33 %	41 km/h	Very high 43
29 Aug after	34.8 °C	32 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
30 Aug after	34.6 °C	33 %	40 km/h	Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Jul 2019

After · 27 Aug 2019

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 · 225Every 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 Balsas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 August 2019 to 20 August 2019 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 August 2019 to 19 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,662 hectares (76.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Balsas (7,716 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 54 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 19 August 2019 → 20 August 2019.
25 October 2026 Start date: 7 August 2019 → 6 August 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.

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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?

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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 7 August 2019 to 19 August 2019. 225 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