How long did the Carolina fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2024 to 20 September 2024 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2024 to 17 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,158 hectares (131.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Campos Lindos (8,954 ha, 2.8 %); Goiatins (3,998 ha, 0.6 %); Carolina (289 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2024-08-29 → 2024-09-20

Carolina fire, 29 August 2024 Campos Lindos, Goiatins, Carolina

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2024, 16:31 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2024 in Carolina, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,158 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 36th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 608 with a page). Number 224 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Carolina · 2025 Campos Lindos · 2017

Burnt area: 13,158ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 29 Aug 2024 – 20 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 29 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 422; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 62; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 196MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug20 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 10 Sept 14 Sept 18 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

41°high

52km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

45% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,641 ha in 2017, 1,864 ha in 2020, 2,643 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,870 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (132 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

Campos Lindos 8,653 inhabitants

8,954 ha reached on 29 Aug

2.8 %
Goiatins 12,433 inhabitants

3,998 ha reached on 30 Aug

0.6 %
Carolina 24,062 inhabitants where it started

289 ha reached on 29 Aug

0.0 %

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 area0.62 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.62 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (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)
29 Aug	36.3 °C	15 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
30 Aug	36.6 °C	21 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
31 Aug	36.9 °C	20 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
1 Sept	37.7 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Sept	38.4 °C	10 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
3 Sept	38.7 °C	16 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
4 Sept	40.2 °C	7 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
5 Sept	39.9 °C	8 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
6 Sept	39.2 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
7 Sept	39.4 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
8 Sept	39.3 °C	12 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
9 Sept	38.4 °C	16 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
10 Sept	39.0 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
11 Sept	39.3 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
12 Sept	39.4 °C	18 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
13 Sept	39.4 °C	14 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
14 Sept	39.1 °C	14 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
15 Sept	39.7 °C	15 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
16 Sept	41.1 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
17 Sept	40.9 °C	14 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
18 Sept	40.2 °C	16 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
19 Sept	39.5 °C	16 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
20 Sept	40.2 °C	15 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
21 Sept after	40.1 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
22 Sept after	41.3 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
23 Sept after	40.7 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
24 Sept after	37.8 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Sept after	34.7 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.5 mm	High 37
26 Sept after	39.0 °C	22 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
27 Sept after	39.5 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
28 Sept after	38.8 °C	23 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
29 Sept after	37.2 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.7 mm	High 38
30 Sept after	39.6 °C	18 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Aug 2024

After · 27 Sept 2024

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 20 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1035 µg/m³

Optical depth0.50

WHO 15

27282930311234567891011121314151617181920

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 · 422Every 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 Carolina fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2024 to 20 September 2024 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 August 2024 to 17 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,158 hectares (131.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Campos Lindos (8,954 ha, 2.8 %); Goiatins (3,998 ha, 0.6 %); Carolina (289 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 65, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 September 2024 → 20 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 August 2024 to 17 September 2024. 422 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.

Where it burned