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Jataí fire, September 2019 Jataí, Rio Verde

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2019, 17:07 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2019 in Jataí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,268 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 21th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 45 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Jataí · 2024Rio Verde · 2024Jataí · 2024Jataí · 2024

Burnt area
21,268ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
16 Sept 2019 – 21 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
16 Sept
2019
Heat detections
591
in a single hotspot: 209 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2019 · 103 MW · 6 18 Sept 2019 · 708 MW · 17 19 Sept 2019 · 13,509 MW · 413 20 Sept 2019 · 1,495 MW · 147 21 Sept 2019 · 129 MW · 8
16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 21 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

36°high
52km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 9.2 mm on 25 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (213 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. Jataí 105,729 inhabitants where it started
    17,024 ha reached on 16 Sept
    2.4 %
  2. Rio Verde 2,985 inhabitants
    4,355 ha reached on 18 Sept
    0.5 %

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 area9.7 ha
Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 9.7 hectares of built-up land and about 400 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)
16 Sept 34.5 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Sept 35.6 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Sept 35.1 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Sept 35.0 °C 19 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
20 Sept 33.9 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Sept 33.4 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Sept after 34.2 °C 33 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 33.8 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Sept after 34.9 °C 23 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Sept after 32.4 °C 32 % 42 km/h 9.2 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2019
After · 28 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 · 591Every 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 Jataí fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 16 September 2019 and 21 September 2019: 6 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 21,268 hectares (212.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Jataí (17,024 ha, 2.4 %); Rio Verde (4,355 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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. 591 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.