How long did the Luciara fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2017 to 30 September 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2017 to 30 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 91,556 hectares (915.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Porto Alegre do Norte (38,083 ha, 9.5 %); Luciara (29,357 ha, 6.9 %); Santa Terezinha (24,721 ha, 3.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 2017-09-10 → 2017-09-30

Luciara fire, 10 September 2017 Porto Alegre do Norte, Luciara, Santa Terezinha

Out · last detection 30 Sept 2017, 04:53 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2017 in Luciara, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 91,556 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 22th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 5 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Luciara · 2016 Santa Terezinha · 2016 Santa Terezinha · 2016 Luciara · 2016

Burnt area: 91,556ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 10 Sept 2017 – 30 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 10 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 3,644; in a single hotspot: 627 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.7GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept30 Sept

Play back 30 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 30 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

40°high

48km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 5.7 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

19% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 17,372 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 58% of the area of London (916 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

Porto Alegre do Norte 12,127 inhabitants

38,083 ha reached on 17 Sept

9.5 %
Luciara 2,509 inhabitants where it started

29,357 ha reached on 10 Sept

6.9 %
Santa Terezinha 7,596 inhabitants

24,721 ha reached on 14 Sept

3.8 %

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 2015

Built-up area0.63 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.63 hectares of built-up land and about 250 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
10 Sept	39.4 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
11 Sept	40.5 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
12 Sept	39.1 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
13 Sept	38.1 °C	16 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
14 Sept	38.6 °C	20 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
15 Sept	38.7 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
16 Sept	39.0 °C	15 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
17 Sept	38.0 °C	18 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
18 Sept	38.9 °C	17 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
19 Sept	39.8 °C	19 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
20 Sept	38.9 °C	19 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
21 Sept	32.3 °C	32 %	32 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
22 Sept	38.3 °C	20 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
23 Sept	39.1 °C	21 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
24 Sept	39.3 °C	19 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Sept	39.3 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Sept	38.5 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Sept	38.0 °C	23 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Sept	38.4 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
29 Sept	39.4 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Sept	37.3 °C	35 %	38 km/h	6.5 mm	Moderate 11
1 Oct after	34.8 °C	46 %	32 km/h	5.7 mm	Low 6

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Sept 2017

After · 7 Oct 2017

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 · 3,644Every 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 Luciara fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 10 September 2017 to 30 September 2017 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 September 2017 to 30 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 91,556 hectares (915.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Porto Alegre do Norte (38,083 ha, 9.5 %); Luciara (29,357 ha, 6.9 %); Santa Terezinha (24,721 ha, 3.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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: 11 September 2017 → 10 September 2017.

RSS Changes to this page

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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 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; 7 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 September 2017 to 30 September 2017. 3,644 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 2015, 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