How long did the Cocos fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2020 and 10 October 2020: 11 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 45,467 hectares (454.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cocos (45,650 ha, 4.5 %); Januária (151 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 · 2020-09-30 → 2020-10-10

Cocos fire, 30 September 2020 Cocos, Januária

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2020, 16:48 UTC

The fire started on 30 September 2020 in Cocos, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 45,467 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 6th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 26 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cocos · 2025 Cocos · 2025 Cocos · 2026 Cocos · 2020

Burnt area: 45,467ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 11days; 30 Sept 2020 – 10 Oct 2020
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 30 Sept; 2020
Heat detections: 1,406; in a single hotspot: 232 MW
Danger at start: 55; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.8GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Sept10 Oct

Play back 10 Oct 2020

How it evolved, day by day

30 Sept 2 Oct 4 Oct 6 Oct 8 Oct 10 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

37°high

53km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 12.6 mm on 11 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 29% of the area of London (455 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

Cocos 19,151 inhabitants where it started

45,650 ha reached on 29 Sept

4.5 %
Januária 17,208 inhabitants

151 ha reached on 29 Sept

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.

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 Sept	36.6 °C	10 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
30 Sept	34.4 °C	20 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
1 Oct	34.0 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Oct	34.7 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Oct	35.5 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Oct	36.4 °C	13 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
5 Oct	34.9 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
6 Oct	35.3 °C	19 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
7 Oct	37.0 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Oct	37.2 °C	15 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Oct	37.1 °C	16 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
10 Oct	35.3 °C	25 %	50 km/h	0.3 mm	Extreme 53
11 Oct after	26.1 °C	60 %	35 km/h	12.6 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 23 Sept 2020

After · 17 Oct 2020

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 · 1,406Every 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 Cocos fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 September 2020 and 10 October 2020: 11 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 45,467 hectares (454.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Cocos (45,650 ha, 4.5 %); Januária (151 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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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; 4 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,406 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