How long did the Itacajá fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2020 to 20 September 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2020 to 20 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,772 hectares (207.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Itacajá (17,425 ha, 5.7 %); Goiatins (3,193 ha, 0.5 %); Recursolândia (294 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2020-08-31 → 2020-09-20

Itacajá fire, 31 August 2020 Itacajá, Goiatins, Recursolândia

Out · last detection 20 Sept 2020, 16:25 UTC

The fire started on 31 August 2020 in Itacajá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,772 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 60th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1241 with a page). Number 73 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Itacajá · 2017 Goiatins · 2019 Itacajá · 2019 Itacajá · 2019

Burnt area: 20,772ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 31 Aug 2020 – 20 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 31 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 688; in a single hotspot: 145 MW
Danger at start: 57; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 342MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Aug20 Sept

Play back 20 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

31 Aug 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 15 Sept 18 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

38°high

49km/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

59% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,379 ha in 2016, 9,384 ha in 2017, 1,655 ha in 2018, 4,123 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,329 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (208 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

Itacajá 6,819 inhabitants where it started

17,425 ha reached on 31 Aug

5.7 %
Goiatins 12,433 inhabitants

3,193 ha reached on 8 Sept

0.5 %
Recursolândia 3,421 inhabitants

294 ha reached on 5 Sept

0.1 %

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 area0.35 ha

Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
31 Aug	37.0 °C	12 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
1 Sept	36.0 °C	17 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 62
2 Sept	35.5 °C	19 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
3 Sept	35.4 °C	18 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
4 Sept	35.8 °C	24 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
5 Sept	36.2 °C	22 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
6 Sept	36.0 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
7 Sept	35.6 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
8 Sept	36.9 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
9 Sept	37.1 °C	22 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
10 Sept	37.2 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 Sept	37.2 °C	18 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Sept	37.3 °C	12 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
13 Sept	36.2 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 61
14 Sept	36.3 °C	19 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
15 Sept	35.8 °C	18 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
16 Sept	37.2 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Sept	37.3 °C	24 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
18 Sept	37.7 °C	22 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
19 Sept	36.6 °C	28 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Sept	36.9 °C	29 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
21 Sept after	35.5 °C	36 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
22 Sept after	34.0 °C	43 %	25 km/h	0.4 mm	High 30
23 Sept after	36.4 °C	37 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 32
24 Sept after	37.1 °C	26 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Sept after	35.5 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
26 Sept after	35.4 °C	29 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
27 Sept after	37.1 °C	22 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
28 Sept after	38.8 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
29 Sept after	37.2 °C	26 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
30 Sept after	36.3 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 24 Aug 2020

After · 27 Sept 2020

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 · 688Every 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 Itacajá fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 August 2020 to 20 September 2020 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2020 to 20 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,772 hectares (207.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Itacajá (17,425 ha, 5.7 %); Goiatins (3,193 ha, 0.5 %); Recursolândia (294 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 ›

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: 2 September 2020 → 31 August 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 September 2020 to 20 September 2020. 688 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