Corumbá fire, 1 September 2021 Corumbá, Ladário
The fire started on 1 September 2021 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 44,147 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 21th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 14 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 44,147ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 31days
- 1 Sept 2021 – 1 Oct 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 1 Sept
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 2,206
- in a single hotspot: 477 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.7GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.2 mm on 2 Oct.
This area had burned before
36% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 535 ha in 2016, 12,804 ha in 2019, 8,629 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 16,027 ha that had burned before.
- 6,312 ha Corumbá fire, October 2019 11,689 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,459 ha Corumbá fire, September 2020 12,364 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,134 ha Corumbá fire, October 2020 5,778 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,150 ha Corumbá fire, August 2020 3,274 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 944 ha Corumbá fire, August 2019 3,909 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 519 ha Corumbá fire, August 2019 4,217 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
42,279 ha reached on 1 Sept0.6 %
-
Ladário 21,522 inhabitants2,150 ha reached on 19 Sept6.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 2.6 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Sept | 37.9 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 2 Sept | 38.6 °C | 24 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 3 Sept | 33.4 °C | 40 % | 31 km/h | 0.9 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 4 Sept | 38.9 °C | 26 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 5 Sept | 36.7 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 28 |
| 6 Sept | 39.0 °C | 25 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 7 Sept | 40.1 °C | 25 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 8 Sept | 39.3 °C | 29 % | 59 km/h | 0.5 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Sept | 25.6 °C | 41 % | 40 km/h | 2.3 mm | Moderate 12 |
| 10 Sept | 30.3 °C | 31 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 21 |
| 11 Sept | 35.4 °C | 28 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 12 Sept | 38.9 °C | 26 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Sept | 39.0 °C | 27 % | 67 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Sept | 40.0 °C | 26 % | 58 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 44 |
| 15 Sept | 31.9 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 1.5 mm | Moderate 20 |
| 16 Sept | 34.2 °C | 39 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 17 Sept | 38.4 °C | 32 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 18 Sept | 40.2 °C | 22 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Sept | 41.6 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 20 Sept | 41.7 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 21 Sept | 33.9 °C | 38 % | 58 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 49 |
| 22 Sept | 33.0 °C | 40 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 23 Sept | 36.4 °C | 34 % | 34 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 36 |
| 24 Sept | 35.5 °C | 31 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 25 Sept | 37.6 °C | 28 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Sept | 38.5 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 2.9 mm | High 23 |
| 27 Sept | 35.4 °C | 36 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 28 Sept | 38.0 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 29 Sept | 38.7 °C | 29 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Sept | 40.0 °C | 27 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 1 Oct | 41.0 °C | 27 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 2 Oct after | 37.2 °C | 35 % | 44 km/h | 2.2 mm | High 24 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 2,206Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 21,988 haCorumbá17 July 2024 · 22 days · 12 km away
- 22,659 haCorumbá23 July 2020 · 23 days · 22 km away
- 147,481 haCorumbá5 June 2024 · 32 days · 23 km away
- 20,334 haCorumbá27 September 2021 · 10 days · 30 km away
- 19,714 haCorumbá30 June 2021 · 17 days · 34 km away
- 35,314 haCorumbá5 September 2019 · 20 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Corumbá fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 September 2021 to 1 October 2021 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2021 to 1 October 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 44,147 hectares (441.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (42,279 ha, 0.6 %); Ladário (2,150 ha, 6.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.7 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 67 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 September 2021 to 1 October 2021. 2,206 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.
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.