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Floriano fire, August 2017 Floriano

Out · last detection 22 Aug 2017, 16:19 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2017 in Floriano, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,463 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 434th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 552 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

The power measured by the satellite is low (24.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Floriano · 2020

Burnt area
4,463ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
10 Aug 2017 – 21 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
10 Aug
2017
Heat detections
190
in a single hotspot: 24 MW
Danger at start
39
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
91MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug21 Aug
22 Aug 2017

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 2017 · 10 MW · 3 11 Aug 2017 · 123 MW · 18 12 Aug 2017 · 94 MW · 16 13 Aug 2017 · 104 MW · 24 14 Aug 2017 · 77 MW · 13 15 Aug 2017 · 226 MW · 47 16 Aug 2017 · 141 MW · 26 17 Aug 2017 · 192 MW · 20 18 Aug 2017 · 15 MW · 2 20 Aug 2017 · 50 MW · 12 21 Aug 2017 · 49 MW · 4 22 Aug 2017 · 9 MW · 2
10 Aug 12 Aug 14 Aug 15 Aug 16 Aug 18 Aug 21 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

38°high
54km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 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. Floriano 62,036 inhabitants where it started
    4,493 ha reached on 10 Aug
    1.3 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
4 Aug 37.5 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Aug 36.5 °C 31 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
6 Aug 35.5 °C 31 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Aug 35.3 °C 29 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Aug 34.8 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Aug 36.6 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Aug 37.3 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Aug 36.5 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug 35.2 °C 31 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Aug 36.2 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Aug 37.1 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
15 Aug 36.8 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Aug 35.3 °C 31 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Aug 35.6 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Aug 36.3 °C 30 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Aug 37.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Aug 35.3 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Aug 36.6 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
22 Aug after 36.5 °C 26 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Aug after 34.9 °C 30 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Aug after 34.5 °C 34 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Aug after 35.3 °C 31 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Aug after 36.2 °C 27 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Aug after 35.8 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Aug after 36.7 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Aug after 37.0 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Aug after 37.1 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
31 Aug after 38.0 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Sept after 37.4 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Sept after 35.9 °C 26 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
3 Sept after 35.6 °C 24 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
4 Sept after 34.7 °C 31 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
5 Sept after 34.5 °C 33 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2017
After · 28 Aug 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 · 190Every 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 Floriano fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2017 and 21 August 2017: 12 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 4,463 hectares (44.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Floriano (4,493 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

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. 190 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.