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Gilbués fire, October 2022 Gilbués

Out · last detection 18 Oct 2022, 03:37 UTC

The fire started on 3 October 2022 in Gilbués, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,983 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 136th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 137 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gilbués · 2026Santa Filomena · 2026Santa Filomena · 2025Santa Filomena · 2023

Burnt area
8,983ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
3 Oct 2022 – 18 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
3 Oct
2022
Heat detections
339
in a single hotspot: 192 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
206MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Oct18 Oct
18 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

3 Oct 2022 · 131 MW · 10 4 Oct 2022 · 506 MW · 33 5 Oct 2022 · 241 MW · 22 6 Oct 2022 · 276 MW · 44 7 Oct 2022 · 358 MW · 20 8 Oct 2022 · 17 MW · 1 9 Oct 2022 · 59 MW · 6 10 Oct 2022 · 36 MW · 12 11 Oct 2022 · 3 MW · 2 12 Oct 2022 · 107 MW · 23 13 Oct 2022 · 654 MW · 67 14 Oct 2022 · 230 MW · 34 15 Oct 2022 · 222 MW · 14 16 Oct 2022 · 98 MW · 19 17 Oct 2022 · 348 MW · 18 18 Oct 2022 · 7 MW · 3
3 Oct 6 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 18 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
49km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.5 mm on 23 Oct.

This area had burned before

26% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 836 ha in 2017, 1,225 ha in 2018, 930 ha in 2019, 3 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,364 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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. Gilbués 10,892 inhabitants where it started
    9,039 ha reached on 26 Sept
    2.6 %

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 area0.14 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 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)
26 Sept 35.0 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Sept 36.4 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
28 Sept 36.7 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Sept 37.9 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
30 Sept 38.0 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Oct 37.4 °C 16 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Oct 37.9 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Oct 37.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Oct 37.7 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Oct 38.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Oct 38.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Oct 36.7 °C 23 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Oct 37.3 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Oct 37.0 °C 24 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Oct 36.9 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Oct 36.0 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Oct 36.1 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Oct 36.3 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Oct 38.0 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
15 Oct 36.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Oct 35.7 °C 23 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Oct 36.3 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Oct 37.1 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Oct after 37.6 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Oct after 36.8 °C 20 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Oct after 37.3 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Oct after 34.9 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 45
23 Oct after 32.2 °C 42 % 33 km/h 7.5 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Sept 2022
After · 25 Oct 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 82 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak82 µg/m³
Days over the guideline12 days
PM10118 µg/m³
Optical depth1.13
123456789101112131415161718192021
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 339Every 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 Gilbués fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 October 2022 and 18 October 2022: 16 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 8,983 hectares (89.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gilbués (9,039 ha, 2.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 339 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.