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Corumbá fire, 7 September 2018 Corumbá

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2018, 17:00 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2018 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,684 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 412th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 194 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2024Corumbá · 2020Corumbá · 2021Corumbá · 2020

Burnt area
3,684ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
7 Sept 2018 – 13 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2018
Heat detections
236
in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
440MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept13 Sept
13 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2018 · 160 MW · 4 8 Sept 2018 · 386 MW · 13 9 Sept 2018 · 677 MW · 50 10 Sept 2018 · 795 MW · 44 11 Sept 2018 · 368 MW · 23 12 Sept 2018 · 310 MW · 15 13 Sept 2018 · 381 MW · 17
7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 13 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
50km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 30.6 mm on 17 Sept.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 37 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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. Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started
    3,686 ha reached on 31 Aug
    0.1 %

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 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)
31 Aug 36.7 °C 32 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Sept 33.8 °C 37 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 42
2 Sept 21.4 °C 66 % 50 km/h 3.6 mm Low 8
3 Sept 24.0 °C 43 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
4 Sept 28.0 °C 40 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
5 Sept 30.0 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Sept 33.2 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Sept 36.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Sept 36.3 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Sept 38.5 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 38.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Sept 37.8 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Sept 37.5 °C 22 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 38.6 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Sept after 29.7 °C 49 % 31 km/h 0.2 mm High 29
15 Sept after 33.9 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.6 mm High 22
16 Sept after 31.3 °C 57 % 38 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 4
17 Sept after 28.9 °C 65 % 43 km/h 30.6 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2018
After · 20 Sept 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 · 236Every 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 Corumbá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2018 and 13 September 2018: 7 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 3,684 hectares (36.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Corumbá (3,686 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
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. 236 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.