Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Castelo do Piauí fire, October 2016 São João da Serra, Castelo do Piauí, São Miguel do Tapuio

Out · last detection 23 Oct 2016, 16:01 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2016 in Castelo do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,124 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 328th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 268 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: São Miguel do Tapuio · 2023São Miguel do Tapuio · 2026São Miguel do Tapuio · 2026Santa Cruz dos Milagres · 2023

Burnt area
5,124ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
11 Oct 2016 – 23 Oct 2016
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
11 Oct
2016
Heat detections
284
in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start
57
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
305MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct23 Oct
23 Oct 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2016 · 100 MW · 3 12 Oct 2016 · 1,437 MW · 47 13 Oct 2016 · 277 MW · 24 14 Oct 2016 · 228 MW · 26 15 Oct 2016 · 666 MW · 64 16 Oct 2016 · 236 MW · 26 17 Oct 2016 · 315 MW · 40 18 Oct 2016 · 157 MW · 11 19 Oct 2016 · 229 MW · 40 20 Oct 2016 · 8 MW · 1 21 Oct 2016 · 1 MW · 1 23 Oct 2016 · 10 MW · 1
11 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct

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
52km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 3.2% of the area of London (51 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. São João da Serra 6,114 inhabitants
    2,503 ha reached on 12 Oct
    2.5 %
  2. Castelo do Piauí 19,288 inhabitants where it started
    2,394 ha reached on 11 Oct
    1.0 %
  3. São Miguel do Tapuio 17,554 inhabitants
    262 ha reached on 19 Oct
    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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
11 Oct 38.4 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
12 Oct 37.6 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Oct 37.5 °C 26 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Oct 38.6 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Oct 38.7 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Oct 39.6 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Oct 38.7 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Oct 39.0 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct 40.0 °C 22 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Oct 37.4 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Oct 36.4 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Oct 37.9 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Oct 38.5 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
24 Oct after 37.7 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Oct after 39.0 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
26 Oct after 39.7 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Oct after 39.1 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Oct after 39.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
29 Oct after 40.5 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
30 Oct after 38.0 °C 28 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Oct after 38.6 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2016
After · 30 Oct 2016

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 · 284Every 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 Castelo do Piauí fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2016 to 23 October 2016 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 October 2016 to 21 October 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,124 hectares (51.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: São João da Serra (2,503 ha, 2.5 %); Castelo do Piauí (2,394 ha, 1.0 %); São Miguel do Tapuio (262 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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

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 11 October 2016 to 21 October 2016. 284 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 2015, 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.