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Balsas fire, 5 September 2022 Balsas, Sambaíba

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2022, 04:52 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2022 in Balsas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,114 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 227th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 286 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balsas · 2020Sambaíba · 2017Tasso Fragoso · 2017Balsas · 2017

Burnt area
5,114ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
5 Sept 2022 – 12 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2022
Heat detections
173
in a single hotspot: 154 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
184MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept12 Sept
12 Sept 2022

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2022 · 454 MW · 45 6 Sept 2022 · 91 MW · 12 7 Sept 2022 · 221 MW · 39 8 Sept 2022 · 114 MW · 23 9 Sept 2022 · 117 MW · 18 10 Sept 2022 · 173 MW · 16 11 Sept 2022 · 294 MW · 18 12 Sept 2022 · 10 MW · 2
5 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 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
43km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,070 ha in 2016, 4 ha in 2017, 1,477 ha in 2018, 1,508 ha in 2019, 2,448 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,748 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. Balsas 101,767 inhabitants where it started
    5,118 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Sambaíba 5,568 inhabitants
    19 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.49 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 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)
5 Sept 37.2 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Sept 36.5 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Sept 36.0 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 35.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Sept 36.0 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept 36.2 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 37.6 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Sept 37.1 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept after 36.4 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Sept after 37.6 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Sept after 37.1 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
16 Sept after 35.9 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept after 36.4 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept after 35.7 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Sept after 36.5 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept after 36.5 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Sept after 36.2 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Sept after 34.9 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2022
After · 19 Sept 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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 11 September 2022 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1074 µg/m³
Optical depth0.51
3456789101112131415
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 173Every 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 Balsas fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2022 and 12 September 2022: 8 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 5,114 hectares (51.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Balsas (5,118 ha, 0.4 %); Sambaíba (19 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 ›

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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 173 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.