How long did the Brejo do Piauí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 October 2023 to 24 October 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 October 2023 to 22 October 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,543 hectares (45.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Brejo do Piauí (4,269 ha, 1.9 %); Ribeira do Piauí (301 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2023-10-14 → 2023-10-24

Brejo do Piauí fire, October 2023 Brejo do Piauí, Ribeira do Piauí

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2023, 04:20 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2023 in Brejo do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,543 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 425th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 208 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeira do Piauí · 2020 Ribeira do Piauí · 2020 Pedro Laurentino · 2024 João Costa · 2020

Burnt area: 4,543ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 14 Oct 2023 – 24 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 14 Oct; 2023
Heat detections: 200; in a single hotspot: 167 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 466MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct24 Oct

Play back 24 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 24 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

40°high

49km/h · peak gust

13%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 2 Nov.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7 ha in 2017, 4,137 ha in 2020.

4,137 ha Ribeira do Piauí fire, September 2020 9,238 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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

Brejo do Piauí 3,904 inhabitants where it started

4,269 ha reached on 14 Oct

1.9 %
Ribeira do Piauí 4,055 inhabitants

301 ha reached on 22 Oct

0.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
14 Oct	38.7 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Oct	36.8 °C	26 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
16 Oct	37.1 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
17 Oct	37.6 °C	13 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
18 Oct	38.7 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
19 Oct	38.3 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
20 Oct	39.6 °C	17 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Oct	39.2 °C	20 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
22 Oct	38.6 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
23 Oct	38.6 °C	25 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
24 Oct	37.6 °C	27 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
25 Oct after	37.9 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
26 Oct after	39.4 °C	23 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Oct after	39.5 °C	22 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
28 Oct after	40.0 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Oct after	39.0 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Oct after	40.0 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
31 Oct after	39.0 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Nov after	38.4 °C	30 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
2 Nov after	36.2 °C	38 %	27 km/h	1.4 mm	High 24

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Oct 2023

After · 31 Oct 2023

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 25 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³

Days over the guideline1 day

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.52

WHO 15

1213141516171819202122232425

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 200Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Brejo do Piauí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 October 2023 to 24 October 2023 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 October 2023 to 22 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,543 hectares (45.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Brejo do Piauí (4,269 ha, 1.9 %); Ribeira do Piauí (301 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 22 October 2023 → 24 October 2023.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 October 2023 to 22 October 2023. 200 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned