How long did the Bannach fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2020 to 20 September 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2020 to 18 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,405 hectares (124.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bannach (11,105 ha, 3.7 %); Cumaru do Norte (1,379 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 39 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 · 2020-09-03 → 2020-09-20

Bannach fire, September 2020 Bannach, Cumaru do Norte

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2020, 16:25 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2020 in Bannach, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,405 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 175th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1096 with a page). Number 144 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cumaru do Norte · 2017 Bannach · 2017 Cumaru do Norte · 2017 Bannach · 2024

Burnt area: 12,405ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 3 Sept 2020 – 20 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 3 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 412; in a single hotspot: 128 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 240MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept20 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 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

36°high

39km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 24 Sept.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,434 ha in 2017, 6,303 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,340 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.8% of the area of London (124 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

Bannach 4,031 inhabitants where it started

11,105 ha reached on 3 Sept

3.7 %
Cumaru do Norte 14,036 inhabitants

1,379 ha reached on 12 Sept

0.1 %

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 area1.0 ha

Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.0 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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)
3 Sept	33.6 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
4 Sept	34.3 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
5 Sept	36.0 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
6 Sept	35.1 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Sept	34.8 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
8 Sept	35.4 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Sept	35.1 °C	27 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
10 Sept	35.9 °C	24 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
11 Sept	35.6 °C	21 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
12 Sept	35.2 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Sept	34.8 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
14 Sept	34.8 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
15 Sept	33.9 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Sept	35.1 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
17 Sept	35.1 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Sept	34.0 °C	35 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
19 Sept	33.5 °C	45 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
20 Sept	33.3 °C	43 %	28 km/h	0.5 mm	High 30
21 Sept after	32.8 °C	45 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
22 Sept after	30.8 °C	53 %	25 km/h	0.8 mm	Moderate 16
23 Sept after	33.3 °C	43 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
24 Sept after	31.4 °C	49 %	31 km/h	4.6 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 27 Aug 2020

After · 27 Sept 2020

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 · 412Every 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 Bannach fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 September 2020 to 20 September 2020 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 September 2020 to 18 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,405 hectares (124.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bannach (11,105 ha, 3.7 %); Cumaru do Norte (1,379 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 39 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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 3 September 2020 to 18 September 2020. 412 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