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Lábrea fire, 11 August 2019 Lábrea

Out · last detection 20 Aug 2019, 06:14 UTC

The fire started on 11 August 2019 in Lábrea, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,617 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 59th largest in Amazonas since 2016 (of 450 with a page). Number 210 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Burnt area
8,617ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
11 Aug 2019 – 20 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Aug
2019
Heat detections
516
in a single hotspot: 345 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
15.0GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

20 Aug 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Aug20 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

11121314151617181920

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
42km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 18 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.1 mm on 21 Aug.

This area had burned before

88% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,893 ha in 2016, 5,268 ha in 2017, 8,701 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,577 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Lábrea 45,448 inhabitants where it started
    8,690 ha reached on 11 Aug
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
11 Aug 34.0 °C 32 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
12 Aug 34.9 °C 28 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Aug 35.8 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Aug 31.0 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Aug 33.7 °C 35 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Aug 33.8 °C 37 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Aug 33.5 °C 45 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm High 28
18 Aug 33.2 °C 53 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Aug 34.0 °C 44 % 19 km/h 2.5 mm Moderate 12
20 Aug 33.6 °C 50 % 26 km/h 8.3 mm Very low 3
21 Aug after 31.9 °C 52 % 34 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 · 4 Aug 2019
After · 27 Aug 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 · 516Every 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?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 August 2019 and 20 August 2019: 10 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 8,617 hectares (86.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Lábrea (8,690 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.8 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.