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Barra do Corda fire, 9 September 2017 Barra do Corda

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2017, 16:32 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2017 in Barra do Corda, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,139 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 554th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 930 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Corda · 2016Jenipapo dos Vieiras · 2017Jenipapo dos Vieiras · 2016Barra do Corda · 2025

Burnt area
3,139ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
9 Sept 2017 – 17 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2017
Heat detections
140
in a single hotspot: 110 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
284MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2017 · 327 MW · 9 10 Sept 2017 · 155 MW · 17 11 Sept 2017 · 644 MW · 34 12 Sept 2017 · 447 MW · 34 14 Sept 2017 · 49 MW · 6 15 Sept 2017 · 87 MW · 10 16 Sept 2017 · 128 MW · 14 17 Sept 2017 · 434 MW · 16
9 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 16 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
48km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 264 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Barra do Corda 84,532 inhabitants where it started
    3,159 ha reached on 9 Sept
    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 2015
Built-up area0.70 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.70 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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 36.1 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept 35.7 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Sept 35.0 °C 38 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Sept 36.1 °C 40 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Sept 35.5 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 37.0 °C 37 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Sept 36.4 °C 32 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Sept 37.1 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 36.9 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Sept 37.1 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept 36.1 °C 38 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
14 Sept 37.3 °C 35 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Sept 37.0 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept 36.4 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
17 Sept 36.2 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Sept after 37.0 °C 35 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept after 38.0 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
20 Sept after 37.4 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Sept after 37.7 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Sept after 36.5 °C 35 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Sept after 37.2 °C 33 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 37.3 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Sept after 36.1 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept after 38.2 °C 35 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
27 Sept after 37.9 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
28 Sept after 38.1 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
29 Sept after 38.4 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Sept after 37.2 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
1 Oct after 37.4 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2017
After · 24 Sept 2017

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 · 140Every 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 do Corda fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2017 and 17 September 2017: 9 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 3,139 hectares (31.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barra do Corda (3,159 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 48 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 ›

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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 140 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 2015, 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.