How long did the Cáceres fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2024 to 24 September 2024 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2024 to 18 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,484 hectares (264.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cáceres (24,994 ha, 1.0 %); Porto Estrela (1,558 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 2024-08-30 → 2024-09-24

Cáceres fire, 30 August 2024 Cáceres, Porto Estrela

Out · last detection 24 Sept 2024, 16:54 UTC

The fire started on 30 August 2024 in Cáceres, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,484 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 128th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 109 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2019 Cáceres · 2020 Cáceres · 2020 Cáceres · 2021

Burnt area: 26,484ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 30 Aug 2024 – 24 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 30 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 1,653; in a single hotspot: 344 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Aug24 Sept

Play back 24 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

30 Aug 3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 19 Sept 24 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

48km/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: 1.8 mm on 26 Sept.

This area had burned before

39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 528 ha in 2016, 1,487 ha in 2017, 4,595 ha in 2019, 5,356 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,319 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (265 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

Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants where it started

24,994 ha reached on 30 Aug

1.0 %
Porto Estrela 3,224 inhabitants

1,558 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.8 %

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 2025

Built-up area2.6 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.6 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (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)
30 Aug	38.9 °C	21 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
31 Aug	38.1 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
1 Sept	34.4 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
2 Sept	37.6 °C	21 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
3 Sept	39.7 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Sept	39.2 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
5 Sept	32.0 °C	35 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
6 Sept	37.3 °C	22 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
7 Sept	40.2 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
8 Sept	40.7 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
9 Sept	40.7 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
10 Sept	40.2 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 Sept	39.8 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
12 Sept	38.8 °C	21 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Sept	40.0 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
14 Sept	37.3 °C	28 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
15 Sept	31.2 °C	51 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
16 Sept	29.9 °C	51 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
17 Sept	36.5 °C	33 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
18 Sept	40.8 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
19 Sept	39.2 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Sept	40.4 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
21 Sept	39.6 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Sept	41.3 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
23 Sept	41.1 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
24 Sept	40.4 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
25 Sept after	41.6 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
26 Sept after	36.0 °C	41 %	34 km/h	1.8 mm	High 23

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Aug 2024

After · 1 Oct 2024

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 12 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 823 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 360: 24 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak823 µg/m³

Days over the guideline31 days

PM101,181 µg/m³

Optical depth14.50

WHO 15

28293031123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627

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 · 1,653Every 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 Cáceres fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 30 August 2024 to 24 September 2024 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 September 2024 to 18 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,484 hectares (264.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cáceres (24,994 ha, 1.0 %); Porto Estrela (1,558 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 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.

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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 5 September 2024 to 18 September 2024. 1,653 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