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Barra do Garças fire, 31 August 2017 Barra do Garças

Out · last detection 19 Sept 2017, 17:33 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2017 in Barra do Garças, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 32,992 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 90th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 29 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Garças · 2016Barra do Garças · 2022Novo São Joaquim · 2026Barra do Garças · 2020

Burnt area
32,992ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
31 Aug 2017 – 19 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
31 Aug
2017
Heat detections
905
in a single hotspot: 464 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
955MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug19 Sept
19 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 2017 · 340 MW · 21 1 Sept 2017 · 826 MW · 54 2 Sept 2017 · 6,396 MW · 192 3 Sept 2017 · 2,114 MW · 130 4 Sept 2017 · 2,446 MW · 126 5 Sept 2017 · 938 MW · 73 6 Sept 2017 · 3,010 MW · 104 7 Sept 2017 · 1,174 MW · 58 8 Sept 2017 · 169 MW · 33 9 Sept 2017 · 346 MW · 50 10 Sept 2017 · 216 MW · 32 11 Sept 2017 · 56 MW · 7 12 Sept 2017 · 25 MW · 5 13 Sept 2017 · 29 MW · 6 14 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 1 15 Sept 2017 · 9 MW · 1 16 Sept 2017 · 12 MW · 2 17 Sept 2017 · 29 MW · 9 19 Sept 2017 · 10 MW · 1
31 Aug 2 Sept 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 19 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
46km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 351 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 21% of the area of London (330 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 Garças 69,210 inhabitants where it started
    33,171 ha reached on 31 Aug
    3.6 %

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 area0.10 ha
Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.10 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
31 Aug 35.5 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Sept 36.5 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Sept 33.9 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Sept 32.6 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Sept 32.0 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
5 Sept 32.5 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Sept 33.5 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept 34.4 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Sept 35.6 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 35.3 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Sept 35.3 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 35.6 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept 35.5 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept 34.1 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Sept 34.5 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 34.9 °C 22 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept 34.1 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept 32.7 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 34.3 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept 35.6 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Sept after 34.9 °C 24 % 45 km/h 1.5 mm High 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Aug 2017
After · 26 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 · 905Every 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 Garças fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2017 to 19 September 2017 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 August 2017 to 17 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 32,992 hectares (329.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Barra do Garças (33,171 ha, 3.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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: 17 September 2017 → 19 September 2017.

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 31 August 2017 to 17 September 2017. 905 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.