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Colônia do Piauí fire, July 2021 Colônia do Piauí, São Francisco do Piauí, São Miguel do Fidalgo

Out · last detection 28 Aug 2021, 16:13 UTC

The fire started on 31 July 2021 in Colônia do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 28 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,532 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 114th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 154 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Santo Inácio do Piauí · 2018Colônia do Piauí · 2020São Miguel do Fidalgo · 2024São Miguel do Fidalgo · 2021

Burnt area
10,532ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
28days
31 Jul 2021 – 27 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
4
municipalities
Started on
31 Jul
2021
Heat detections
496
in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
93MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Jul27 Aug
28 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

31 Jul 2021 · 234 MW · 13 1 Aug 2021 · 44 MW · 7 2 Aug 2021 · 286 MW · 32 3 Aug 2021 · 7 MW · 9 5 Aug 2021 · 130 MW · 56 6 Aug 2021 · 317 MW · 56 7 Aug 2021 · 104 MW · 23 8 Aug 2021 · 112 MW · 11 9 Aug 2021 · 73 MW · 28 10 Aug 2021 · 46 MW · 15 11 Aug 2021 · 145 MW · 31 12 Aug 2021 · 151 MW · 23 13 Aug 2021 · 104 MW · 19 14 Aug 2021 · 59 MW · 15 15 Aug 2021 · 58 MW · 19 16 Aug 2021 · 9 MW · 7 17 Aug 2021 · 70 MW · 21 18 Aug 2021 · 173 MW · 23 19 Aug 2021 · 16 MW · 9 20 Aug 2021 · 6 MW · 1 22 Aug 2021 · 33 MW · 5 23 Aug 2021 · 115 MW · 18 24 Aug 2021 · 84 MW · 16 25 Aug 2021 · 81 MW · 16 26 Aug 2021 · 43 MW · 14 27 Aug 2021 · 19 MW · 7 28 Aug 2021 · 7 MW · 2
31 Jul 5 Aug 6 Aug 9 Aug 13 Aug 17 Aug 22 Aug 26 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
61km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

13% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 890 ha in 2018, 2 ha in 2019, 503 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (105 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
    8,907 ha reached on 31 Jul
    9.3 %
  2. São Francisco do Piauí 5,392 inhabitants
    1,642 ha reached on 10 Aug
    1.2 %
  3. São Miguel do Fidalgo 2,829 inhabitants
    45 ha
    0.1 %
  4. São José do Peixe 3,297 inhabitants
    8 ha
    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 2020
Built-up area0.23 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.23 hectares of 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)
31 Jul 35.1 °C 28 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Aug 31.2 °C 37 % 60 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
2 Aug 33.7 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Aug 35.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Aug 34.6 °C 18 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Aug 34.6 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Aug 35.6 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Aug 34.1 °C 25 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Aug 34.4 °C 21 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Aug 35.6 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
10 Aug 36.2 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Aug 36.3 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Aug 36.7 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Aug 36.1 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Aug 35.8 °C 23 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Aug 35.2 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Aug 35.3 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Aug 35.5 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Aug 34.9 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
19 Aug 34.7 °C 24 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Aug 33.9 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Aug 35.1 °C 22 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Aug 36.0 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Aug 37.0 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
24 Aug 36.5 °C 23 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Aug 36.2 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
26 Aug 36.9 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Aug 37.6 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Aug after 36.2 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
29 Aug after 37.0 °C 18 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Aug after 36.3 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Aug after 36.5 °C 25 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Sept after 35.9 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
2 Sept after 35.0 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Sept after 36.4 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Sept after 38.0 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Sept after 38.3 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
6 Sept after 38.2 °C 24 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Jul 2021
After · 3 Sept 2021

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 · 496Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 July 2021 to 27 August 2021 (28 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 July 2021 to 20 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,532 hectares (105.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Colônia do Piauí (8,907 ha, 9.3 %); São Francisco do Piauí (1,642 ha, 1.2 %); São Miguel do Fidalgo (45 ha, 0.1 %); São José do Peixe (8 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 August 2021 → 27 August 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?

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 31 July 2021 to 20 August 2021. 496 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.