How long did the Cocos fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2021 to 22 September 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2021 to 21 September 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,523 hectares (85.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Cocos (8,562 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 2021-09-08 → 2021-09-22

Cocos fire, 8 September 2021 Cocos

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2021, 16:43 UTC

The fire started on 8 September 2021 in Cocos, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,523 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 118th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 192 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cocos · 2020 Cocos · 2025 Cocos · 2021 Jaborandi · 2021

Burnt area: 8,523ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 8 Sept 2021 – 22 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 8 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 332; in a single hotspot: 213 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 444MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Sept22 Sept

Play back 22 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

8 Sept 11 Sept 14 Sept 17 Sept 20 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

39°high

46km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 54 ha in 2019, 286 ha in 2020.

286 ha Cocos fire, October 2020 5,110 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.4% of the area of London (85 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

8,562 ha reached on 8 Sept

0.8 %

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)
8 Sept	34.2 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 Sept	35.7 °C	14 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Sept	35.9 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Sept	36.2 °C	19 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
12 Sept	34.8 °C	16 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
13 Sept	34.4 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Sept	35.4 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
15 Sept	36.0 °C	14 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
16 Sept	34.6 °C	15 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
17 Sept	31.0 °C	24 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
18 Sept	32.6 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
19 Sept	35.6 °C	13 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
20 Sept	35.9 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Sept	36.7 °C	21 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
22 Sept	38.7 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 45
23 Sept after	33.4 °C	29 %	53 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 Sept after	32.9 °C	33 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
25 Sept after	32.3 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Sept after	32.1 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
27 Sept after	33.8 °C	23 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Sept after	34.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
29 Sept after	34.9 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
30 Sept after	35.5 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
1 Oct after	36.3 °C	25 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
2 Oct after	34.8 °C	28 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Sept 2021

After · 29 Sept 2021

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 · 332Every 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?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 8 September 2021 to 22 September 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 10 September 2021 to 21 September 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,523 hectares (85.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Cocos (8,562 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 21 September 2021 → 22 September 2021.
25 October 2026 Start date: 10 September 2021 → 8 September 2021.

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 10 September 2021 to 21 September 2021. 332 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.

Where it burned