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Goiânia fire, September 2019 Goiânia, Goianápolis

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2019, 16:42 UTC

The fire started on 14 September 2019 in Goiânia, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,315 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 483th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 829 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Goiânia · 2017

Burnt area
3,315ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Sept 2019 – 17 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
14 Sept
2019
Heat detections
181
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
746MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 2019 · 462 MW · 10 15 Sept 2019 · 1,752 MW · 87 16 Sept 2019 · 747 MW · 72 17 Sept 2019 · 22 MW · 12
14 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 17 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
46km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,319 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Goiânia 1,437,366 inhabitants where it started
    3,181 ha reached on 14 Sept
    4.3 %
  2. Goianápolis 7,944 inhabitants
    151 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.9 %

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 area6.8 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.8 hectares of built-up land and about 300 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)
7 Sept 33.0 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept 33.8 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Sept 33.9 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
10 Sept 35.3 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Sept 36.0 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Sept 36.4 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Sept 37.0 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 36.6 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Sept 34.7 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Sept 35.5 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
17 Sept 36.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept after 35.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
19 Sept after 36.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Sept after 36.9 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Sept after 37.8 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Sept after 37.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept after 34.7 °C 25 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
24 Sept after 34.1 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Sept after 33.5 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept after 26.0 °C 45 % 32 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 20
27 Sept after 30.9 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.8 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Sept 2019
After · 24 Sept 2019

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 · 181Every 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 Goiânia fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 September 2019 and 17 September 2019: 4 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 3,315 hectares (33.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Goiânia (3,181 ha, 4.3 %); Goianápolis (151 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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. 181 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.