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Lábrea fire, 29 August 2018 Lábrea

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2018, 06:08 UTC

The fire started on 29 August 2018 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,486 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 332th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 213 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lábrea · 2020Lábrea · 2019Lábrea · 2021Lábrea · 2022

Burnt area
3,486ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
29 Aug 2018 – 13 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
29 Aug
2018
Heat detections
180
in a single hotspot: 164 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
152MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Aug13 Sept
13 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

29 Aug 2018 · 7 MW · 1 31 Aug 2018 · 2 MW · 1 1 Sept 2018 · 52 MW · 8 3 Sept 2018 · 76 MW · 9 4 Sept 2018 · 794 MW · 41 5 Sept 2018 · 566 MW · 66 6 Sept 2018 · 82 MW · 12 7 Sept 2018 · 38 MW · 6 8 Sept 2018 · 27 MW · 2 9 Sept 2018 · 86 MW · 15 10 Sept 2018 · 41 MW · 7 11 Sept 2018 · 1 MW · 1 12 Sept 2018 · 358 MW · 8 13 Sept 2018 · 4 MW · 3
29 Aug 1 Sept 4 Sept 6 Sept 8 Sept 10 Sept 12 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
41km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 14 Sept.

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,395 ha in 2016, 2,282 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,522 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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. Lábrea 45,448 inhabitants where it started
    3,516 ha reached on 29 Aug
    0.0 %

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.

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)
25 Aug 32.3 °C 49 % 26 km/h 9.5 mm Very low 1
26 Aug 26.9 °C 55 % 41 km/h 1.6 mm Very low 2
27 Aug 31.4 °C 44 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Low 7
28 Aug 33.3 °C 43 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Low 9
29 Aug 34.8 °C 43 % 19 km/h 0.5 mm Low 10
30 Aug 33.9 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.7 mm Low 9
31 Aug 33.6 °C 49 % 27 km/h 1.4 mm Low 6
1 Sept 35.4 °C 48 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm Low 10
2 Sept 32.9 °C 51 % 30 km/h 4.4 mm Very low 3
3 Sept 28.9 °C 49 % 37 km/h 0.4 mm Low 8
4 Sept 31.3 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
5 Sept 32.3 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Sept 34.1 °C 31 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
7 Sept 34.0 °C 34 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
8 Sept 35.1 °C 36 % 17 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
9 Sept 36.0 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
10 Sept 35.2 °C 43 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 21
11 Sept 35.7 °C 40 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 20
12 Sept 35.7 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
13 Sept 34.7 °C 45 % 27 km/h 1.9 mm Low 11
14 Sept after 33.7 °C 52 % 36 km/h 5.1 mm Very low 3

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Aug 2018
After · 20 Sept 2018

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 · 180Every 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 Lábrea fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 August 2018 to 13 September 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 September 2018 to 11 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,486 hectares (34.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lábrea (3,516 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 September 2018 → 13 September 2018.
  2. Start date: 1 September 2018 → 29 August 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 September 2018 to 11 September 2018. 180 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.

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.