Corumbá fire, 12 September 2021 Corumbá, Ladário
The fire started on 12 September 2021 in Corumbá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 31 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 122,759 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.
Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:
It is the 6th largest in Mato Grosso do Sul since 2016 (of 506 with a page). Number 3 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 122,759ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 31days
- 12 Sept 2021 – 12 Oct 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Sept
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 5,982
- in a single hotspot: 521 MW
- Danger at start
- 36
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 4.2GW
- 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: 3.5 mm on 15 Oct.
This area had burned before
83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,989 ha in 2017, 12,251 ha in 2019, 132,885 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 101,455 ha that had burned before.
- 35,311 ha Corumbá fire, March 2020 43,561 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 30,167 ha Corumbá fire, July 2020 41,691 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 27,625 ha Puerto Quijarro fire, July 2020 56,339 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 5,062 ha Corumbá fire, January 2017 5,404 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,391 ha Corumbá fire, July 2020 4,749 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,064 ha Corumbá fire, March 2020 5,899 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,768 ha Corumbá fire, April 2020 3,042 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,030 ha Corumbá fire, July 2020 4,804 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
-
101,014 ha reached on 12 Sept1.6 %
-
Ladário 21,522 inhabitants3 ha0.0 %
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 1.2 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Sept | 38.8 °C | 28 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 13 Sept | 38.9 °C | 28 % | 65 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Sept | 39.7 °C | 27 % | 55 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 38 |
| 15 Sept | 31.7 °C | 45 % | 35 km/h | 1.3 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 16 Sept | 34.2 °C | 41 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 17 Sept | 38.4 °C | 34 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 18 Sept | 40.5 °C | 23 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 19 Sept | 41.4 °C | 20 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 20 Sept | 41.8 °C | 19 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 21 Sept | 34.2 °C | 39 % | 49 km/h | 0.3 mm | Very high 43 |
| 22 Sept | 33.3 °C | 42 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 23 Sept | 36.8 °C | 34 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Sept | 35.6 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 25 Sept | 38.1 °C | 28 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 26 Sept | 38.7 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 3.0 mm | High 25 |
| 27 Sept | 35.0 °C | 38 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 28 Sept | 38.3 °C | 31 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 29 Sept | 39.3 °C | 27 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 30 Sept | 39.9 °C | 28 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 1 Oct | 41.3 °C | 27 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 2 Oct | 38.9 °C | 32 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 3 Oct | 40.3 °C | 27 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Oct | 28.8 °C | 49 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 5 Oct | 33.4 °C | 44 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 25 |
| 6 Oct | 38.3 °C | 34 % | 36 km/h | 0.5 mm | High 32 |
| 7 Oct | 32.9 °C | 53 % | 23 km/h | 4.3 mm | Low 6 |
| 8 Oct | 38.5 °C | 34 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 9 Oct | 36.8 °C | 38 % | 41 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 28 |
| 10 Oct | 35.0 °C | 43 % | 40 km/h | 2.1 mm | Moderate 15 |
| 11 Oct | 29.5 °C | 64 % | 23 km/h | 1.0 mm | Low 9 |
| 12 Oct | 35.5 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 18 |
| 13 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 35 % | 49 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 35 |
| 14 Oct after | 38.5 °C | 37 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 15 Oct after | 39.2 °C | 30 % | 71 km/h | 3.5 mm | High 32 |
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 · 5,982Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 48,746 haCorumbá4 June 2024 · 33 days · 12 km away
- 43,561 haCorumbá2 March 2020 · 18 days · 12 km away
- 41,691 haCorumbá14 July 2020 · 29 days · 16 km away
- 58,626 haPuerto Quijarro12 August 2024 · 34 days · 31 km away
- 56,339 haPuerto QuijarroJuly 2020 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 147,481 haCorumbá5 June 2024 · 32 days · 35 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 12 September 2021 to 12 October 2021 (31 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2021 to 6 October 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 122,759 hectares (1,227.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Corumbá (101,014 ha, 1.6 %); Ladário (3 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 65 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 ›
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.
- Last day with fire: 6 October 2021 → 12 October 2021.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 September 2021 to 6 October 2021. 5,982 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.