How long did the Balsas fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 August 2024 and 28 August 2024: 15 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 10,204 hectares (102.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Balsas (10,267 ha, 0.8 %); Alto Parnaíba (15 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 2024-08-14 → 2024-08-28

Balsas fire, 14 August 2024 Balsas, Alto Parnaíba

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2024, 17:03 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2024 in Balsas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,204 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 55th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 311 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Balsas · 2017 Balsas · 2025 Balsas · 2025 Balsas · 2022

Burnt area: 10,204ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 14 Aug 2024 – 28 Aug 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 14 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 340; in a single hotspot: 96 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 294MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug28 Aug

Play back 28 Aug 2024

How it evolved, day by day

14 Aug 17 Aug 20 Aug 23 Aug 26 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

49km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,720 ha in 2017, 1 ha in 2019, 2,341 ha in 2020, 63 ha in 2021, 221 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,314 ha that had burned before.

2,720 ha Balsas fire, October 2017 4,812 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.4% of the area of London (102 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

10,267 ha reached on 14 Aug

0.8 %
Alto Parnaíba 11,109 inhabitants

15 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 2025

Built-up area3.0 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
14 Aug	33.4 °C	32 %	45 km/h	Very high 46
15 Aug	34.5 °C	25 %	38 km/h	Very high 41
16 Aug	34.8 °C	26 %	39 km/h	Very high 43
17 Aug	34.0 °C	26 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
18 Aug	33.8 °C	26 %	40 km/h	Very high 43
19 Aug	33.6 °C	25 %	40 km/h	Very high 44
20 Aug	34.6 °C	25 %	36 km/h	Very high 42
21 Aug	35.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	Very high 42
22 Aug	35.7 °C	21 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
23 Aug	33.8 °C	27 %	45 km/h	Extreme 50
24 Aug	34.0 °C	25 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
25 Aug	35.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	Very high 44
26 Aug	35.8 °C	21 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
27 Aug	36.3 °C	19 %	41 km/h	Very high 49
28 Aug	33.8 °C	19 %	49 km/h	Extreme 54
29 Aug after	34.1 °C	21 %	53 km/h	Extreme 57
30 Aug after	33.5 °C	26 %	48 km/h	Extreme 52
31 Aug after	33.9 °C	24 %	40 km/h	Very high 47
1 Sept after	34.4 °C	24 %	40 km/h	Very high 47
2 Sept after	35.2 °C	14 %	39 km/h	Extreme 51
3 Sept after	35.9 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 50
4 Sept after	37.3 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
5 Sept after	36.6 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
6 Sept after	36.6 °C	15 %	38 km/h	Extreme 54
7 Sept after	36.6 °C	18 %	39 km/h	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Aug 2024

After · 4 Sept 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 21 August 2024 the air beside the fire reached 21 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak21 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1030 µg/m³

Optical depth0.47

WHO 15

1213141516171819202122232425262728293031

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 · 340Every 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?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 August 2024 and 28 August 2024: 15 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 10,204 hectares (102.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Balsas (10,267 ha, 0.8 %); Alto Parnaíba (15 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 340 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 2025, 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