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Barra fire, 6 September 2023 Buritirama, Barra

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2023, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2023 in Barra, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,014 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 239th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 174 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra · 2022Barra · 2025Barra · 2021Barra · 2019

Burnt area
5,014ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
6 Sept 2023 – 25 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2023
Heat detections
269
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
203MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept25 Sept
23 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2023 · 118 MW · 7 7 Sept 2023 · 55 MW · 8 8 Sept 2023 · 147 MW · 6 9 Sept 2023 · 373 MW · 12 10 Sept 2023 · 698 MW · 36 11 Sept 2023 · 137 MW · 18 12 Sept 2023 · 458 MW · 10 13 Sept 2023 · 206 MW · 14 14 Sept 2023 · 167 MW · 18 15 Sept 2023 · 476 MW · 48 16 Sept 2023 · 500 MW · 33 17 Sept 2023 · 34 MW · 11 18 Sept 2023 · 87 MW · 22 19 Sept 2023 · 130 MW · 11 20 Sept 2023 · 13 MW · 2 21 Sept 2023 · 34 MW · 6 22 Sept 2023 · 27 MW · 5 23 Sept 2023 · 2 MW · 2
6 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 Sept 21 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

37°high
51km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 124 ha in 2019, 51 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.2% of the area of London (50 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. Buritirama 19,589 inhabitants
    2,896 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.7 %
  2. Barra 51,092 inhabitants where it started
    2,146 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
6 Sept 32.8 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Sept 31.5 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 32.6 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Sept 32.8 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Sept 32.7 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Sept 32.8 °C 25 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Sept 33.2 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Sept 34.4 °C 16 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Sept 34.9 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 37.0 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
16 Sept 35.0 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
17 Sept 34.5 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
18 Sept 33.1 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept 32.9 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Sept 33.2 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept 33.2 °C 18 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Sept 34.0 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Sept 35.7 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Sept 35.6 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
25 Sept 36.7 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Sept after 35.7 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Sept after 33.1 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Sept after 35.8 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 40
29 Sept after 37.2 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Sept after 36.2 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
1 Oct after 36.1 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
2 Oct after 36.7 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Oct after 36.4 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Oct after 35.4 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2023
After · 2 Oct 2023

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 15 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 16 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak16 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1023 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
4567891011121314151617181920212223
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 · 269Every 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 Barra fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2023 to 25 September 2023 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2023 to 20 September 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,014 hectares (50.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Buritirama (2,896 ha, 0.7 %); Barra (2,146 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 September 2023 → 25 September 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 September 2023 to 20 September 2023. 269 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.