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Correntina fire, March 2017 Correntina

Out · last detection 14 Mar 2017, 16:36 UTC

The fire started on 6 March 2017 in Correntina, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,095 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 454th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 953 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Correntina · 2016Correntina · 2017Correntina · 2023Correntina · 2021

Burnt area
3,095ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
6 Mar 2017 – 14 Mar 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Mar
2017
Heat detections
139
in a single hotspot: 437 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
488MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Mar14 Mar
14 Mar 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Mar 2017 · 1,084 MW · 31 7 Mar 2017 · 1,248 MW · 68 8 Mar 2017 · 526 MW · 28 9 Mar 2017 · 2 MW · 2 11 Mar 2017 · 47 MW · 6 14 Mar 2017 · 24 MW · 4
6 Mar 7 Mar 8 Mar 9 Mar 11 Mar 14 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
34km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.6 mm on 15 Mar.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 261 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (31 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. Correntina 32,457 inhabitants where it started
    3,112 ha reached on 6 Mar
    0.3 %

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)
6 Mar 33.6 °C 36 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
7 Mar 32.7 °C 40 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
8 Mar 33.9 °C 30 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
9 Mar 32.7 °C 36 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 11
10 Mar 33.4 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
11 Mar 32.5 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
12 Mar 30.1 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.3 mm Low 11
13 Mar 31.2 °C 43 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
14 Mar 31.2 °C 44 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
15 Mar after 26.3 °C 61 % 22 km/h 4.6 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Feb 2017
After · 21 Mar 2017

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 · 139Every 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 Correntina fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 March 2017 to 14 March 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 March 2017 to 9 March 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,095 hectares (31.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Correntina (3,112 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.9 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 14, class Moderate.
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: 9 March 2017 → 14 March 2017.

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 6 March 2017 to 9 March 2017. 139 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.