Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Benedito Leite fire, August 2018 Benedito Leite

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2018, 15:48 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2018 in Benedito Leite, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,853 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 244th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 103 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Benedito Leite · 2017São Félix de Balsas · 2024Uruçuí · 2026São Félix de Balsas · 2025

Burnt area
4,853ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
21 Aug 2018 – 1 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
21 Aug
2018
Heat detections
160
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
138MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug1 Sept
1 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

22 Aug 2018 · 6 MW · 1 23 Aug 2018 · 15 MW · 2 25 Aug 2018 · 16 MW · 4 26 Aug 2018 · 157 MW · 10 27 Aug 2018 · 94 MW · 12 28 Aug 2018 · 43 MW · 11 29 Aug 2018 · 215 MW · 19 30 Aug 2018 · 577 MW · 62 31 Aug 2018 · 226 MW · 32 1 Sept 2018 · 34 MW · 7
22 Aug 25 Aug 27 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug

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
47km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 5 Sept.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 135 ha in 2016, 1,583 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,382 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (49 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. Benedito Leite 5,469 inhabitants where it started
    4,885 ha reached on 22 Aug
    2.7 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.62 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.62 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
22 Aug 36.1 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
23 Aug 36.2 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Aug 36.6 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Aug 37.0 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Aug 37.3 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
27 Aug 36.5 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
28 Aug 35.9 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
29 Aug 36.4 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Aug 35.8 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Aug 35.3 °C 27 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
1 Sept 35.1 °C 33 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Sept after 36.8 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Sept after 37.2 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
4 Sept after 37.5 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Sept after 34.2 °C 50 % 30 km/h 1.4 mm Moderate 19

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Aug 2018
After · 8 Sept 2018

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 · 160Every 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 Benedito Leite fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2018 to 1 September 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2018 to 1 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,853 hectares (48.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Benedito Leite (4,885 ha, 2.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 47 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 25 August 2018 to 1 September 2018. 160 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 2020, 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.