How long did the Corumbá fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 September 2021 to 15 October 2021 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2021 to 9 October 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,716 hectares (177.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aquidauana (12,551 ha, 0.7 %); Corumbá (5,280 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2021-09-28 → 2021-10-15

Corumbá fire, 28 September 2021 Aquidauana, Corumbá

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2021, 05:21 UTC

The fire started on 28 September 2021 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,716 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 64th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 69 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Corumbá · 2020 Aquidauana · 2024 Corumbá · 2023 Corumbá · 2019

Burnt area: 17,716ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 28 Sept 2021 – 15 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 28 Sept; 2021
Heat detections: 864; in a single hotspot: 261 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 1.2GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Sept15 Oct

Play back 15 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

28 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 8 Oct 13 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

41°high

75km/h · peak gust

26%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 66.4 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9 ha in 2019, 1,857 ha in 2020.

1,857 ha Corumbá fire, December 2020 6,183 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (177 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

Aquidauana 46,803 inhabitants

12,551 ha reached on 1 Oct

0.7 %
Corumbá 96,268 inhabitants where it started

5,280 ha reached on 28 Sept

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 area0.18 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.18 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)
28 Sept	37.9 °C	30 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
29 Sept	39.0 °C	28 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
30 Sept	39.8 °C	27 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
1 Oct	41.0 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
2 Oct	37.5 °C	36 %	41 km/h	1.3 mm	High 26
3 Oct	40.0 °C	28 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
4 Oct	27.8 °C	57 %	44 km/h	0.2 mm	High 26
5 Oct	34.4 °C	41 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 23
6 Oct	38.6 °C	33 %	31 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
7 Oct	31.3 °C	57 %	26 km/h	2.9 mm	Low 7
8 Oct	36.9 °C	35 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
9 Oct	36.5 °C	40 %	43 km/h	4.7 mm	Moderate 14
10 Oct	32.0 °C	51 %	39 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 17
11 Oct	27.8 °C	67 %	24 km/h	5.5 mm	Very low 2
12 Oct	34.4 °C	47 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	Low 8
13 Oct	38.6 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
14 Oct	36.2 °C	41 %	60 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
15 Oct	37.1 °C	36 %	75 km/h	6.7 mm	Moderate 17
16 Oct after	24.9 °C	66 %	39 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 11
17 Oct after	32.1 °C	46 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 14
18 Oct after	30.5 °C	45 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 16
19 Oct after	34.5 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
20 Oct after	34.9 °C	27 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
21 Oct after	36.4 °C	24 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Oct after	38.2 °C	26 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
23 Oct after	40.7 °C	27 %	63 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
24 Oct after	30.1 °C	50 %	42 km/h	66.4 mm	Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 21 Sept 2021

After · 22 Oct 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 · 864Every 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 Corumbá fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 September 2021 to 15 October 2021 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 September 2021 to 9 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 17,716 hectares (177.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Aquidauana (12,551 ha, 0.7 %); Corumbá (5,280 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 9 October 2021 → 15 October 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

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What really happened?

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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 28 September 2021 to 9 October 2021. 864 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