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Mansidão fire, 12 September 2021 Mansidão, Santa Rita de Cássia

Out · last detection 23 Sept 2021, 16:25 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2021 in Mansidão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,650 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 375th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 467 with a page). Number 630 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mansidão · 2025Buritirama · 2021Mansidão · 2020Santa Rita de Cássia · 2025

Burnt area
3,650ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
12 Sept 2021 – 23 Sept 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
12 Sept
2021
Heat detections
183
in a single hotspot: 131 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
251MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept23 Sept
23 Sept 2021

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 2021 · 431 MW · 7 13 Sept 2021 · 99 MW · 9 14 Sept 2021 · 319 MW · 17 15 Sept 2021 · 445 MW · 26 16 Sept 2021 · 345 MW · 19 17 Sept 2021 · 234 MW · 40 18 Sept 2021 · 106 MW · 10 19 Sept 2021 · 884 MW · 30 20 Sept 2021 · 82 MW · 11 21 Sept 2021 · 5 MW · 1 22 Sept 2021 · 14 MW · 3 23 Sept 2021 · 52 MW · 10
12 Sept 14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 22 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
11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

56% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,704 ha in 2017, 559 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,038 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (36 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. Mansidão 13,919 inhabitants where it started
    2,344 ha reached on 12 Sept
    0.7 %
  2. Santa Rita de Cássia 27,390 inhabitants
    1,325 ha reached on 15 Sept
    0.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
8 Sept 35.2 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Sept 36.4 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Sept 37.7 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 37.2 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Sept 36.5 °C 17 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Sept 35.9 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Sept 36.8 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Sept 37.2 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
16 Sept 36.8 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Sept 34.6 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Sept 34.9 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Sept 36.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
20 Sept 37.4 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
21 Sept 37.5 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Sept 39.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Sept 34.3 °C 31 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Sept after 34.6 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Sept after 33.7 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept after 34.9 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Sept after 35.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
28 Sept after 36.0 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Sept after 36.3 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Sept after 36.1 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Oct after 36.3 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Oct after 37.0 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Oct after 37.3 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Sept 2021
After · 30 Sept 2021

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 · 183Every 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 Mansidão fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 September 2021 and 23 September 2021: 12 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 3,650 hectares (36.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mansidão (2,344 ha, 0.7 %); Santa Rita de Cássia (1,325 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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. 183 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.