How long did the Capitólio fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2019 and 22 September 2019: 6 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 4,755 hectares (47.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Capitólio (4,780 ha, 9.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2019-09-17 → 2019-09-22

Capitólio fire, September 2019 Capitólio

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2019, 04:17 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2019 in Capitólio, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,755 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Minas Gerais since 2016 (of 227 with a page). Number 500 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

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Burnt area: 4,755ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 17 Sept 2019 – 22 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 17 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 136; in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 158MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept22 Sept

Play back 22 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 21 Sept 22 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

34°high

38km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.1 mm on 25 Sept.

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 144 ha in 2016, 1,225 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,303 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (48 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

Capitólio 10,380 inhabitants where it started

4,780 ha reached on 17 Sept

9.1 %

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.

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)
17 Sept	32.4 °C	26 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Sept	34.3 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Sept	34.5 °C	20 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Sept	33.5 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
21 Sept	30.6 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
22 Sept	30.9 °C	45 %	37 km/h	0.3 mm	High 32
23 Sept after	25.2 °C	48 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
24 Sept after	27.7 °C	39 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
25 Sept after	20.7 °C	58 %	30 km/h	19.1 mm	Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Sept 2019

After · 29 Sept 2019

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.

Detections table · 136Every 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 Capitólio fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2019 and 22 September 2019: 6 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 4,755 hectares (47.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Capitólio (4,780 ha, 9.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 ›

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

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 136 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.

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