Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Colônia do Piauí fire, September 2018 Colônia do Piauí, Oeiras

Out · last detection 5 Oct 2018, 16:50 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2018 in Colônia do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,378 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 92th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 27 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Oeiras · 2016Oeiras · 2023Oeiras · 2026Santo Inácio do Piauí · 2018

Burnt area
11,378ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
17 Sept 2018 – 5 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
17 Sept
2018
Heat detections
495
in a single hotspot: 211 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
356MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept5 Oct
5 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2018 · 68 MW · 4 18 Sept 2018 · 56 MW · 9 19 Sept 2018 · 53 MW · 15 20 Sept 2018 · 71 MW · 12 21 Sept 2018 · 119 MW · 26 22 Sept 2018 · 114 MW · 20 23 Sept 2018 · 604 MW · 76 24 Sept 2018 · 121 MW · 33 25 Sept 2018 · 96 MW · 26 26 Sept 2018 · 537 MW · 40 27 Sept 2018 · 335 MW · 24 28 Sept 2018 · 164 MW · 29 29 Sept 2018 · 3,491 MW · 80 30 Sept 2018 · 78 MW · 18 1 Oct 2018 · 181 MW · 17 2 Oct 2018 · 195 MW · 16 3 Oct 2018 · 163 MW · 6 4 Oct 2018 · 300 MW · 39 5 Oct 2018 · 17 MW · 5
17 Sept 20 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 2 Oct 5 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
47km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 15 Oct.

This area had burned before

48% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,481 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.2% of the area of London (114 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. Colônia do Piauí 6,994 inhabitants where it started
    8,575 ha reached on 17 Sept
    9.0 %
  2. Oeiras 38,161 inhabitants
    2,878 ha reached on 21 Sept
    1.1 %

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 area2.3 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (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)
17 Sept 39.6 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Sept 39.7 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Sept 38.4 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Sept 37.7 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Sept 37.5 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Sept 38.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Sept 38.3 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Sept 37.6 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Sept 36.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Sept 37.6 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Sept 38.2 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Sept 39.1 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept 39.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Sept 37.6 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 43
1 Oct 37.9 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 48
2 Oct 38.1 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Oct 38.4 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
4 Oct 39.0 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Oct 38.3 °C 31 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct after 36.9 °C 33 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Oct after 37.9 °C 29 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Oct after 37.6 °C 26 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Oct after 38.7 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct after 38.9 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Oct after 38.3 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Oct after 37.5 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Oct after 38.2 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Oct after 39.9 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Oct after 36.1 °C 41 % 29 km/h 1.6 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2018
After · 12 Oct 2018

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 · 495Every 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 Colônia do Piauí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 September 2018 and 5 October 2018: 19 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 11,378 hectares (113.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Colônia do Piauí (8,575 ha, 9.0 %); Oeiras (2,878 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 47 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 495 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.