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Cáceres fire, 7 September 2021 Cáceres

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2021, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2021 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 39 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 117,348 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 14th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 5 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2021San Matías · 2024Cáceres · 2020

Burnt area
117,348ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
39days
7 Sept 2021 – 15 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2021
Heat detections
4,025
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
51
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept15 Oct
15 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2021 · 2,767 MW · 61 8 Sept 2021 · 488 MW · 53 10 Sept 2021 · 49 MW · 10 11 Sept 2021 · 129 MW · 18 12 Sept 2021 · 1,145 MW · 53 13 Sept 2021 · 118 MW · 16 14 Sept 2021 · 172 MW · 18 16 Sept 2021 · 54 MW · 5 18 Sept 2021 · 96 MW · 8 19 Sept 2021 · 73 MW · 6 20 Sept 2021 · 261 MW · 17 21 Sept 2021 · 62 MW · 6 22 Sept 2021 · 519 MW · 60 23 Sept 2021 · 4,125 MW · 190 24 Sept 2021 · 15,961 MW · 998 25 Sept 2021 · 9,128 MW · 1116 26 Sept 2021 · 4,133 MW · 309 27 Sept 2021 · 843 MW · 138 28 Sept 2021 · 2,433 MW · 154 29 Sept 2021 · 213 MW · 47 30 Sept 2021 · 2,995 MW · 192 1 Oct 2021 · 1,371 MW · 105 2 Oct 2021 · 210 MW · 52 3 Oct 2021 · 277 MW · 24 4 Oct 2021 · 2,092 MW · 95 5 Oct 2021 · 320 MW · 54 6 Oct 2021 · 25 MW · 4 7 Oct 2021 · 840 MW · 35 8 Oct 2021 · 122 MW · 21 9 Oct 2021 · 36 MW · 6 10 Oct 2021 · 1,898 MW · 50 13 Oct 2021 · 75 MW · 10 14 Oct 2021 · 254 MW · 28 15 Oct 2021 · 871 MW · 66
7 Sept 13 Sept 20 Sept 24 Sept 25 Sept 30 Sept 5 Oct 10 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
67km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.1 mm on 24 Oct.

How big is it?

20 km
It burned the equivalent of 74% of the area of London (1,173 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
    118,312 ha
    4.8 %

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 area0.58 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.58 hectares of 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)
7 Sept 41.3 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Sept 40.9 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 47
9 Sept 27.7 °C 54 % 34 km/h 3.2 mm Low 8
10 Sept 29.8 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 18
11 Sept 36.4 °C 28 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
12 Sept 39.9 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept 39.7 °C 28 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Sept 39.1 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept 33.4 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
16 Sept 36.0 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
17 Sept 38.5 °C 33 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
18 Sept 40.2 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Sept 41.1 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Sept 41.5 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Sept 39.5 °C 24 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Sept 34.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept 38.2 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept 36.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
25 Sept 39.0 °C 27 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Sept 41.3 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 42
27 Sept 36.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 39
28 Sept 39.4 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept 39.9 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
30 Sept 41.1 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Oct 41.5 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
2 Oct 40.6 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Oct 39.8 °C 29 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Oct 34.4 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Oct 33.7 °C 42 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Oct 37.8 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
7 Oct 36.7 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.7 mm High 32
8 Oct 39.2 °C 34 % 37 km/h 2.1 mm High 27
9 Oct 37.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
10 Oct 37.4 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Oct 34.1 °C 47 % 28 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
12 Oct 36.8 °C 44 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 24
13 Oct 39.6 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
14 Oct 38.5 °C 37 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Oct 40.0 °C 25 % 67 km/h 0.6 mm Extreme 56
16 Oct after 32.5 °C 45 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Oct after 33.5 °C 39 % 28 km/h 0.4 mm High 30
18 Oct after 31.4 °C 51 % 30 km/h 0.6 mm High 25
19 Oct after 35.8 °C 31 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 34
20 Oct after 37.9 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Oct after 38.9 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Oct after 39.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Oct after 40.2 °C 29 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Oct after 32.4 °C 49 % 41 km/h 13.1 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2021
After · 22 Oct 2021

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 · 0Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2021 and 15 October 2021: 39 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 117,348 hectares (1,173.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cáceres (118,312 ha, 4.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 7 September 2021 → 31 August 2021.

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; 5 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.