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Cáceres fire, 4 September 2019 Cáceres

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2019, 17:39 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2019 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,741 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 482th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 178 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2024Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2021

Burnt area
9,741ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
4 Sept 2019 – 14 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Sept
2019
Heat detections
321
in a single hotspot: 438 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
889MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept14 Sept
14 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 2019 · 17 MW · 3 6 Sept 2019 · 34 MW · 3 7 Sept 2019 · 251 MW · 30 8 Sept 2019 · 955 MW · 52 9 Sept 2019 · 5,317 MW · 140 10 Sept 2019 · 797 MW · 83 11 Sept 2019 · 8 MW · 1 13 Sept 2019 · 1 MW · 1 14 Sept 2019 · 622 MW · 8
4 Sept 7 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 14 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

41°high
52km/h · peak gust
21%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 24 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 50 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (97 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. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started
    9,814 ha reached on 4 Sept
    0.4 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
4 Sept 36.8 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Sept 36.8 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Sept 39.2 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Sept 40.3 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Sept 40.0 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 40.7 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Sept 40.0 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 40.2 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Sept 31.6 °C 32 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Sept 32.4 °C 43 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Sept 38.0 °C 34 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Sept after 40.3 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Sept after 40.7 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Sept after 36.9 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept after 39.7 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept after 39.4 °C 33 % 63 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Sept after 40.1 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 44
21 Sept after 36.0 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Sept after 36.2 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept after 38.4 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Sept after 40.0 °C 39 % 26 km/h 2.5 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2019
After · 21 Sept 2019

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 · 321Every 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 Cáceres fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 September 2019 to 14 September 2019 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2019 to 11 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,741 hectares (97.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (9,814 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.7 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 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 7 September 2019 to 11 September 2019. 321 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.