Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Caracaraí fire, 9 March 2019 Caracaraí

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2019, 17:43 UTC

The fire started on 9 March 2019 in Caracaraí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,249 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 41th largest in Roraima since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 351 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caracaraí · 2019Iracema · 2024Iracema · 2024

Burnt area
6,249ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
9 Mar 2019 – 7 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Mar
2019
Heat detections
518
in a single hotspot: 140 MW
Danger at start
31
High · FWI index
Average daily power
221MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Mar7 Apr
7 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

10 Mar 2019 · 1 MW · 1 11 Mar 2019 · 22 MW · 2 12 Mar 2019 · 30 MW · 1 13 Mar 2019 · 25 MW · 3 14 Mar 2019 · 786 MW · 42 15 Mar 2019 · 60 MW · 28 16 Mar 2019 · 77 MW · 5 17 Mar 2019 · 557 MW · 20 18 Mar 2019 · 608 MW · 40 19 Mar 2019 · 667 MW · 43 20 Mar 2019 · 127 MW · 27 21 Mar 2019 · 328 MW · 41 22 Mar 2019 · 532 MW · 37 23 Mar 2019 · 204 MW · 28 24 Mar 2019 · 532 MW · 56 25 Mar 2019 · 36 MW · 14 26 Mar 2019 · 121 MW · 20 27 Mar 2019 · 52 MW · 13 28 Mar 2019 · 228 MW · 13 30 Mar 2019 · 10 MW · 2 31 Mar 2019 · 303 MW · 16 1 Apr 2019 · 361 MW · 28 2 Apr 2019 · 216 MW · 21 3 Apr 2019 · 15 MW · 1 4 Apr 2019 · 6 MW · 4 6 Apr 2019 · 4 MW · 1 7 Apr 2019 · 49 MW · 11
10 Mar 14 Mar 18 Mar 22 Mar 26 Mar 31 Mar 4 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
45km/h · peak gust
33%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 8 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 3.9% of the area of London (62 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
    6,295 ha reached on 10 Mar
    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 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)
10 Mar 36.1 °C 33 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Mar 33.1 °C 47 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 26
12 Mar 34.4 °C 42 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Mar 35.5 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Mar 35.3 °C 41 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Mar 33.6 °C 44 % 45 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 14
16 Mar 34.3 °C 44 % 41 km/h 2.2 mm Moderate 12
17 Mar 35.1 °C 41 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Mar 35.8 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
19 Mar 36.3 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Mar 35.8 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Mar 35.2 °C 42 % 34 km/h 2.9 mm Low 10
22 Mar 36.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm High 23
23 Mar 36.1 °C 34 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Mar 36.4 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
25 Mar 35.3 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
26 Mar 35.9 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
27 Mar 35.6 °C 42 % 34 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
28 Mar 36.2 °C 39 % 36 km/h 1.3 mm Moderate 21
29 Mar 33.9 °C 51 % 32 km/h 6.2 mm Very low 4
30 Mar 32.5 °C 58 % 31 km/h 9.9 mm Very low 1
31 Mar 33.6 °C 54 % 28 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 3
1 Apr 36.2 °C 40 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
2 Apr 36.3 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
3 Apr 35.4 °C 39 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
4 Apr 34.5 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
5 Apr 35.1 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
6 Apr 36.1 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
7 Apr 35.9 °C 38 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
8 Apr after 33.8 °C 47 % 22 km/h 2.1 mm Low 9

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Mar 2019
After · 14 Apr 2019

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 · 518Every 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 9 March 2019 to 7 April 2019 (30 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 March 2019 to 4 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,249 hectares (62.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Caracaraí (6,295 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 33 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 4 April 2019 → 7 April 2019.
  2. Start date: 12 March 2019 → 9 March 2019.

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 12 March 2019 to 4 April 2019. 518 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.