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Canutama fire, September 2024 Canutama, Humaitá

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2024, 18:18 UTC

The fire started on 1 September 2024 in Canutama, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,289 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 67th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 393 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…
Burnt area
8,289ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
1 Sept 2024 – 25 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
1 Sept
2024
Heat detections
702
in a single hotspot: 373 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
381MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Sept25 Sept
25 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

1 Sept 2024 · 270 MW · 7 2 Sept 2024 · 38 MW · 8 3 Sept 2024 · 21 MW · 4 4 Sept 2024 · 3 MW · 2 5 Sept 2024 · 21 MW · 6 6 Sept 2024 · 4 MW · 5 7 Sept 2024 · 104 MW · 26 8 Sept 2024 · 6 MW · 3 9 Sept 2024 · 52 MW · 17 11 Sept 2024 · 1,045 MW · 12 12 Sept 2024 · 330 MW · 56 13 Sept 2024 · 1,974 MW · 85 14 Sept 2024 · 1,853 MW · 119 15 Sept 2024 · 304 MW · 99 16 Sept 2024 · 309 MW · 31 17 Sept 2024 · 546 MW · 25 18 Sept 2024 · 67 MW · 16 20 Sept 2024 · 195 MW · 20 21 Sept 2024 · 704 MW · 31 22 Sept 2024 · 227 MW · 33 23 Sept 2024 · 254 MW · 25 24 Sept 2024 · 398 MW · 53 25 Sept 2024 · 26 MW · 19
1 Sept 5 Sept 9 Sept 13 Sept 14 Sept 18 Sept 23 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

40°high
35km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 11.2 mm on 27 Sept.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,132 ha in 2021, 4,879 ha in 2022, 924 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,902 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (83 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. Canutama 16,869 inhabitants where it started
    4,332 ha reached on 1 Sept
    0.1 %
  2. Humaitá 57,473 inhabitants
    4,012 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.1 %

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)
1 Sept 38.7 °C 25 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
2 Sept 36.7 °C 31 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Sept 36.0 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 32
4 Sept 37.0 °C 40 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
5 Sept 37.8 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Sept 37.1 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Sept 34.3 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
8 Sept 36.8 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Sept 36.7 °C 35 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Sept 36.9 °C 38 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
11 Sept 35.0 °C 47 % 35 km/h 1.0 mm Moderate 20
12 Sept 37.9 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Sept 39.3 °C 26 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
14 Sept 38.1 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Sept 34.8 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 31
16 Sept 34.9 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
17 Sept 37.2 °C 35 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
18 Sept 36.3 °C 38 % 32 km/h 0.6 mm High 30
19 Sept 37.2 °C 37 % 26 km/h 1.1 mm High 26
20 Sept 38.4 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Sept 39.7 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
22 Sept 37.9 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
23 Sept 39.3 °C 29 % 27 km/h 1.0 mm High 30
24 Sept 37.4 °C 35 % 30 km/h 1.3 mm High 28
25 Sept 37.7 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
26 Sept after 37.5 °C 34 % 22 km/h 0.1 mm High 33
27 Sept after 29.0 °C 68 % 26 km/h 11.2 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Aug 2024
After · 2 Oct 2024

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 18 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 284 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 194: 13 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak284 µg/m³
Days over the guideline35 days
PM10407 µg/m³
Optical depth5.02
29303112345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293012345
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 · 702Every 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 Canutama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2024 to 25 September 2024 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2024 to 25 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,289 hectares (82.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Canutama (4,332 ha, 0.1 %); Humaitá (4,012 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, class Very high.
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 2024 → 1 September 2024.

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 2024 to 25 September 2024. 702 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.