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Guiratinga fire, September 2021 Guiratinga, Tesouro

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2021, 16:30 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2021 in Guiratinga, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,082 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 416th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 146 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tesouro · 2016Guiratinga · 2020Tesouro · 2017Tesouro · 2020

Burnt area
11,082ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
15 Sept 2021 – 28 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Sept
2021
Heat detections
363
in a single hotspot: 115 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
253MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept28 Sept
28 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

15 Sept 2021 · 53 MW · 7 17 Sept 2021 · 244 MW · 16 18 Sept 2021 · 42 MW · 8 19 Sept 2021 · 162 MW · 12 20 Sept 2021 · 414 MW · 36 21 Sept 2021 · 514 MW · 61 22 Sept 2021 · 380 MW · 69 23 Sept 2021 · 1,143 MW · 86 24 Sept 2021 · 161 MW · 43 25 Sept 2021 · 144 MW · 17 26 Sept 2021 · 9 MW · 3 27 Sept 2021 · 16 MW · 3 28 Sept 2021 · 10 MW · 2
15 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept 28 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

40°high
36km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 7 Oct.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,892 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7% of the area of London (111 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. Guiratinga 10,966 inhabitants where it started
    8,139 ha reached on 15 Sept
    1.6 %
  2. Tesouro 3,025 inhabitants
    3,003 ha reached on 21 Sept
    0.7 %

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 area0.16 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 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)
15 Sept 36.6 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
16 Sept 37.3 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
17 Sept 37.2 °C 25 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
18 Sept 37.6 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Sept 38.6 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 39.6 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Sept 39.9 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Sept 38.7 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept 39.0 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Sept 36.1 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 48
25 Sept 36.5 °C 29 % 16 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
26 Sept 34.3 °C 33 % 26 km/h 0.4 mm Very high 39
27 Sept 35.2 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Sept 36.3 °C 30 % 26 km/h 1.0 mm High 29
29 Sept after 36.9 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
30 Sept after 37.2 °C 30 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
1 Oct after 37.0 °C 34 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 35
2 Oct after 35.7 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.7 mm High 33
3 Oct after 36.7 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
4 Oct after 37.0 °C 29 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Oct after 34.5 °C 34 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Oct after 37.2 °C 30 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
7 Oct after 33.3 °C 40 % 32 km/h 1.5 mm Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2021
After · 5 Oct 2021

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 · 363Every 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 Guiratinga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 September 2021 and 28 September 2021: 14 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 11,082 hectares (110.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guiratinga (8,139 ha, 1.6 %); Tesouro (3,003 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.9 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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. 363 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.