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Barra do Garças fire, 6 October 2017 Barra do Garças, General Carneiro

Out · last detection 17 Oct 2017, 17:08 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2017 in Barra do Garças, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,341 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1001th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 426 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Garças · 2016Barra do Garças · 2020Barra do Garças · 2020Barra do Garças · 2016

Burnt area
5,341ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
6 Oct 2017 – 17 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Oct
2017
Heat detections
220
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
144MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct17 Oct
17 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Oct 2017 · 48 MW · 5 7 Oct 2017 · 10 MW · 1 8 Oct 2017 · 9 MW · 1 9 Oct 2017 · 54 MW · 6 10 Oct 2017 · 62 MW · 7 11 Oct 2017 · 85 MW · 21 12 Oct 2017 · 460 MW · 64 13 Oct 2017 · 541 MW · 43 14 Oct 2017 · 109 MW · 14 15 Oct 2017 · 143 MW · 24 16 Oct 2017 · 185 MW · 31 17 Oct 2017 · 19 MW · 3
6 Oct 8 Oct 10 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 14 Oct 16 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

42°high
39km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.4 mm on 22 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (53 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
    5,072 ha reached on 6 Oct
    0.6 %
  2. General Carneiro 6,037 inhabitants
    307 ha reached on 16 Oct
    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 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)
6 Oct 38.2 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Oct 38.0 °C 25 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Oct 39.5 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Oct 38.4 °C 22 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Oct 39.0 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Oct 39.9 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Oct 40.7 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Oct 41.1 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Oct 37.5 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Oct 38.7 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Oct 41.6 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Oct 38.6 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Oct after 38.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Oct after 38.0 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
20 Oct after 37.8 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Oct after 37.3 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm High 38
22 Oct after 33.6 °C 45 % 40 km/h 9.4 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2017
After · 24 Oct 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 · 220Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 October 2017 and 17 October 2017: 12 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 5,341 hectares (53.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Barra do Garças (5,072 ha, 0.6 %); General Carneiro (307 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 39 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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 220 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.