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Barra do Garças fire, 3 September 2017 Barra do Garças, Nova Xavantina, Novo São Joaquim

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2017, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2017 in Barra do Garças, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,089 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 204th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 73 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Garças · 2019Barra do Garças · 2024Novo São Joaquim · 2026Barra do Garças · 2016

Burnt area
19,089ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
3 Sept 2017 – 21 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2017
Heat detections
695
in a single hotspot: 163 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
460MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2017 · 2 MW · 1 4 Sept 2017 · 1,181 MW · 49 5 Sept 2017 · 104 MW · 15 6 Sept 2017 · 729 MW · 30 7 Sept 2017 · 533 MW · 38 8 Sept 2017 · 824 MW · 53 9 Sept 2017 · 449 MW · 48 10 Sept 2017 · 1,032 MW · 74 11 Sept 2017 · 408 MW · 79 12 Sept 2017 · 359 MW · 48 13 Sept 2017 · 228 MW · 39 14 Sept 2017 · 355 MW · 47 15 Sept 2017 · 1,189 MW · 90 16 Sept 2017 · 372 MW · 50 17 Sept 2017 · 81 MW · 7 18 Sept 2017 · 422 MW · 25 19 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 1 21 Sept 2017 · 6 MW · 1
3 Sept 6 Sept 9 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (191 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
    15,961 ha reached on 3 Sept
    1.8 %
  2. Nova Xavantina 24,345 inhabitants
    3,185 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.6 %
  3. Novo São Joaquim 6,919 inhabitants
    31 ha reached on 7 Sept
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 35.1 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Sept 34.5 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Sept 35.0 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Sept 35.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Sept 36.9 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept 37.6 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Sept 37.8 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept 37.8 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
11 Sept 38.0 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Sept 38.0 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Sept 36.6 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Sept 37.0 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 37.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Sept 36.6 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 35.1 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Sept 37.0 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Sept 37.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept 37.3 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 52
21 Sept 33.6 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 42
22 Sept after 35.6 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 36.5 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 38.5 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept after 37.8 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept after 36.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Sept after 32.0 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm High 38
28 Sept after 31.1 °C 49 % 26 km/h 0.8 mm Moderate 20
29 Sept after 34.6 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Sept after 32.2 °C 41 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
1 Oct after 34.2 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2017
After · 28 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 · 695Every 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 3 September 2017 to 21 September 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2017 to 16 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 19,089 hectares (190.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Barra do Garças (15,961 ha, 1.8 %); Nova Xavantina (3,185 ha, 0.6 %); Novo São Joaquim (31 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 45 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 September 2017 → 21 September 2017.
  2. Start date: 6 September 2017 → 3 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 6 September 2017 to 16 September 2017. 695 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.