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Caracaraí fire, 5 March 2018 Caracaraí

Out · last detection 2 Apr 2018, 05:39 UTC

The fire started on 5 March 2018 in Caracaraí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,977 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 10th largest in Roraima since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 12 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caracaraí · 2023Caracaraí · 2018Caracaraí · 2024

Burnt area
16,977ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
5 Mar 2018 – 2 Apr 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
5 Mar
2018
Heat detections
592
in a single hotspot: 263 MW
Danger at start
0
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
266MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Mar2 Apr
2 Apr 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Mar 2018 · 33 MW · 4 6 Mar 2018 · 20 MW · 10 7 Mar 2018 · 8 MW · 1 8 Mar 2018 · 37 MW · 4 9 Mar 2018 · 20 MW · 9 10 Mar 2018 · 155 MW · 17 11 Mar 2018 · 394 MW · 32 12 Mar 2018 · 51 MW · 22 13 Mar 2018 · 52 MW · 12 14 Mar 2018 · 164 MW · 22 15 Mar 2018 · 423 MW · 30 16 Mar 2018 · 6 MW · 5 18 Mar 2018 · 1,277 MW · 73 19 Mar 2018 · 408 MW · 35 20 Mar 2018 · 308 MW · 20 21 Mar 2018 · 175 MW · 15 22 Mar 2018 · 10 MW · 1 23 Mar 2018 · 326 MW · 57 24 Mar 2018 · 1,639 MW · 97 25 Mar 2018 · 381 MW · 5 26 Mar 2018 · 612 MW · 35 27 Mar 2018 · 167 MW · 37 28 Mar 2018 · 22 MW · 3 29 Mar 2018 · 28 MW · 2 1 Apr 2018 · 140 MW · 19 2 Apr 2018 · 48 MW · 25
5 Mar 9 Mar 13 Mar 18 Mar 22 Mar 24 Mar 26 Mar 1 Apr

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

36°high
48km/h · peak gust
34%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 21.6 mm on 3 Apr.

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 11% of the area of London (170 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. Caracaraí where it started
    17,098 ha reached on 5 Mar
    0.4 %

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)
5 Mar 32.1 °C 63 % 29 km/h 5.7 mm Very low 0
6 Mar 30.2 °C 70 % 37 km/h 18.0 mm Very low 0
7 Mar 31.0 °C 62 % 43 km/h 1.0 mm Very low 1
8 Mar 31.5 °C 60 % 38 km/h 1.2 mm Very low 2
9 Mar 31.6 °C 54 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Low 5
10 Mar 32.3 °C 48 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
11 Mar 33.0 °C 47 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
12 Mar 33.7 °C 47 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
13 Mar 31.9 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Low 11
14 Mar 32.5 °C 48 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
15 Mar 32.9 °C 45 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Mar 32.4 °C 51 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 13
17 Mar 32.6 °C 51 % 44 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 13
18 Mar 34.4 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
19 Mar 35.0 °C 39 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
20 Mar 35.3 °C 43 % 35 km/h 2.7 mm Low 7
21 Mar 33.0 °C 52 % 42 km/h 8.7 mm Very low 2
22 Mar 32.6 °C 55 % 40 km/h 5.2 mm Very low 1
23 Mar 34.7 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
24 Mar 35.5 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
25 Mar 34.9 °C 43 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
26 Mar 33.0 °C 53 % 35 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 3
27 Mar 34.0 °C 47 % 36 km/h 2.0 mm Very low 5
28 Mar 29.8 °C 70 % 32 km/h 10.9 mm Very low 0
29 Mar 32.2 °C 62 % 30 km/h 9.8 mm Very low 0
30 Mar 31.5 °C 58 % 22 km/h 5.4 mm Very low 0
31 Mar 32.5 °C 54 % 27 km/h 3.0 mm Very low 0
1 Apr 34.8 °C 41 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Very low 5
2 Apr 33.5 °C 50 % 31 km/h 1.4 mm Very low 3
3 Apr after 29.4 °C 74 % 30 km/h 21.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Feb 2018
After · 9 Apr 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 · 592Every 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 Caracaraí fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 March 2018 to 2 April 2018 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 March 2018 to 2 April 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,977 hectares (169.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Caracaraí (17,098 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 34 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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 March 2018 → 5 March 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 March 2018 to 2 April 2018. 592 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.