How long did the Iracema fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 March 2019 to 29 March 2019 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 March 2019 to 29 March 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,647 hectares (36.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Iracema (3,672 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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.

BR · Brazil · 2019-03-04 → 2019-03-29

Iracema fire, March 2019 Iracema

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2019, 17:12 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2019 in Iracema, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,647 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Roraima since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 727 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Iracema · 2016 Iracema · 2024 Iracema · 2019 Iracema · 2016

Burnt area: 3,647ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 26days; 4 Mar 2019 – 29 Mar 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 4 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 191; in a single hotspot: 165 MW
Danger at start: 33; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 65MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar29 Mar

Play back 29 Mar 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 10 Mar 15 Mar 18 Mar 19 Mar 21 Mar 24 Mar 29 Mar

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

43km/h · peak gust

31%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.2 mm on 9 Apr.

This area had burned before

71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,579 ha in 2016, 1,010 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,575 ha that had burned before.

1,397 ha Iracema fire, February 2016 6,771 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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

Iracema where it started

3,672 ha reached on 4 Mar

0.3 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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)
4 Mar	36.4 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
5 Mar	35.5 °C	34 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
6 Mar	36.2 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
7 Mar	36.6 °C	36 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
8 Mar	35.9 °C	38 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
9 Mar	36.0 °C	32 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Mar	36.4 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Mar	36.2 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
12 Mar	34.7 °C	41 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
13 Mar	36.0 °C	32 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
14 Mar	35.6 °C	38 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
15 Mar	34.0 °C	42 %	39 km/h	2.7 mm	Moderate 14
16 Mar	35.2 °C	41 %	40 km/h	0.6 mm	High 22
17 Mar	35.5 °C	39 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Mar	36.0 °C	36 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
19 Mar	36.7 °C	32 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Mar	36.8 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Mar	35.8 °C	39 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Mar	36.7 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	High 30
23 Mar	36.7 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
24 Mar	37.2 °C	31 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
25 Mar	36.0 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
26 Mar	35.7 °C	36 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
27 Mar	36.2 °C	38 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
28 Mar	36.6 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 33
29 Mar	35.2 °C	43 %	34 km/h	4.8 mm	Low 8
30 Mar after	32.2 °C	57 %	30 km/h	8.4 mm	Very low 2
31 Mar after	33.8 °C	52 %	28 km/h	1.8 mm	Very low 4
1 Apr after	36.6 °C	35 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 18
2 Apr after	36.7 °C	33 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
3 Apr after	35.3 °C	38 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
4 Apr after	34.6 °C	41 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
5 Apr after	36.0 °C	36 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
6 Apr after	36.4 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
7 Apr after	36.3 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
8 Apr after	34.2 °C	42 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
9 Apr after	33.0 °C	51 %	26 km/h	3.2 mm	Low 5

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 25 Feb 2019

After · 5 Apr 2019

Before After

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 · 191Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Iracema fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 March 2019 to 29 March 2019 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 March 2019 to 29 March 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,647 hectares (36.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Iracema (3,672 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Start date: 11 March 2019 → 4 March 2019.

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 11 March 2019 to 29 March 2019. 191 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.

Where it burned