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Canto do Buriti fire, 13 September 2018 Canto do Buriti

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2018, 04:26 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2018 in Canto do Buriti, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,133 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 13 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Canto do Buriti · 2024Canto do Buriti · 2025Canto do Buriti · 2020Alvorada do Gurguéia · 2016

Burnt area
16,133ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
13 Sept 2018 – 15 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
13 Sept
2018
Heat detections
740
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
52
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
226MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept15 Oct
15 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

13 Sept 2018 · 75 MW · 8 14 Sept 2018 · 570 MW · 33 15 Sept 2018 · 123 MW · 17 16 Sept 2018 · 224 MW · 20 17 Sept 2018 · 118 MW · 11 18 Sept 2018 · 135 MW · 21 19 Sept 2018 · 122 MW · 31 20 Sept 2018 · 217 MW · 26 21 Sept 2018 · 151 MW · 15 22 Sept 2018 · 344 MW · 27 23 Sept 2018 · 320 MW · 46 24 Sept 2018 · 111 MW · 25 25 Sept 2018 · 96 MW · 22 26 Sept 2018 · 330 MW · 27 27 Sept 2018 · 446 MW · 57 28 Sept 2018 · 841 MW · 47 29 Sept 2018 · 111 MW · 27 30 Sept 2018 · 221 MW · 53 1 Oct 2018 · 36 MW · 12 2 Oct 2018 · 265 MW · 23 3 Oct 2018 · 329 MW · 33 4 Oct 2018 · 558 MW · 42 5 Oct 2018 · 15 MW · 10 6 Oct 2018 · 39 MW · 1 7 Oct 2018 · 60 MW · 5 8 Oct 2018 · 324 MW · 8 9 Oct 2018 · 173 MW · 12 10 Oct 2018 · 301 MW · 27 11 Oct 2018 · 507 MW · 21 12 Oct 2018 · 130 MW · 8 13 Oct 2018 · 24 MW · 4 14 Oct 2018 · 112 MW · 8 15 Oct 2018 · 19 MW · 13
13 Sept 18 Sept 23 Sept 28 Sept 3 Oct 8 Oct 13 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
52km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.7 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (161 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. Canto do Buriti 19,365 inhabitants where it started
    16,243 ha reached on 13 Sept
    3.7 %

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 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)
13 Sept 34.5 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 35.2 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Sept 35.5 °C 28 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Sept 36.6 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 38.8 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Sept 38.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
19 Sept 38.4 °C 24 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Sept 37.0 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Sept 36.6 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Sept 37.8 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Sept 38.0 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
24 Sept 36.0 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Sept 35.4 °C 30 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Sept 36.7 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Sept 37.5 °C 26 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Sept 38.0 °C 24 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Sept 39.1 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Sept 35.3 °C 33 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Oct 36.5 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Oct 37.6 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Oct 37.6 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
4 Oct 37.8 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Oct 36.7 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Oct 35.7 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Oct 36.1 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Oct 36.0 °C 31 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Oct 37.4 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Oct 38.2 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Oct 38.2 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
12 Oct 37.0 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Oct 37.3 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Oct 39.5 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Oct 35.6 °C 37 % 31 km/h 18.9 mm Low 7
16 Oct after 29.0 °C 64 % 34 km/h 13.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Sept 2018
After · 22 Oct 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 · 740Every 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 Canto do Buriti fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 13 September 2018 and 15 October 2018: 33 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 16,133 hectares (161.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Canto do Buriti (16,243 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 52 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 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 740 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.