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Fernando Falcão fire, October 2017 Fernando Falcão, Grajaú

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2017, 04:26 UTC

The fire started on 11 October 2017 in Fernando Falcão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,149 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 94th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 233 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Barra do Corda · 2017Barra do Corda · 2017Barra do Corda · 2025Grajaú · 2016

Burnt area
8,149ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
11 Oct 2017 – 28 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
11 Oct
2017
Heat detections
455
in a single hotspot: 358 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
880MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Oct28 Oct
28 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

11 Oct 2017 · 1 MW · 1 12 Oct 2017 · 32 MW · 2 13 Oct 2017 · 250 MW · 12 14 Oct 2017 · 3 MW · 1 17 Oct 2017 · 4 MW · 1 18 Oct 2017 · 75 MW · 13 19 Oct 2017 · 1,187 MW · 28 20 Oct 2017 · 4,034 MW · 75 21 Oct 2017 · 352 MW · 20 22 Oct 2017 · 2,529 MW · 77 23 Oct 2017 · 1,829 MW · 112 24 Oct 2017 · 2,463 MW · 88 25 Oct 2017 · 99 MW · 9 26 Oct 2017 · 339 MW · 14 28 Oct 2017 · 1 MW · 2
11 Oct 14 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 22 Oct 25 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

39°high
48km/h · peak gust
25%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 14.8 mm on 31 Oct.

This area had burned before

7% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 576 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.1% of the area of London (81 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. Fernando Falcão 10,873 inhabitants where it started
    6,932 ha reached on 11 Oct
    1.4 %
  2. Grajaú 73,872 inhabitants
    1,269 ha reached on 24 Oct
    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 2015
Built-up area0.32 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.32 hectares of 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)
11 Oct 36.9 °C 36 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Oct 36.6 °C 42 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Oct 37.1 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Oct 36.9 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 32
15 Oct 35.2 °C 47 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm High 30
16 Oct 34.4 °C 51 % 31 km/h 0.6 mm High 23
17 Oct 36.2 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 28
18 Oct 38.1 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
19 Oct 37.6 °C 32 % 48 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
20 Oct 38.4 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
21 Oct 38.0 °C 30 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Oct 38.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Oct 37.9 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 38.5 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Oct 37.5 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Oct 38.6 °C 31 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Oct 34.3 °C 48 % 34 km/h 0.5 mm High 28
28 Oct 34.9 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
29 Oct after 36.3 °C 40 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Oct after 32.0 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.5 mm High 25
31 Oct after 25.6 °C 82 % 27 km/h 14.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Oct 2017
After · 4 Nov 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 · 455Every 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 Fernando Falcão fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 October 2017 to 28 October 2017 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 October 2017 to 28 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,149 hectares (81.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Fernando Falcão (6,932 ha, 1.4 %); Grajaú (1,269 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 25 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.
  1. Start date: 17 October 2017 → 11 October 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 17 October 2017 to 28 October 2017. 455 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.