Mansidão fire, September 2023 Mansidão, Cotegipe
The fire started on 25 September 2023 in Mansidão, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,806 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 62th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 37 in Brazil in 2023, of 431.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 12,806ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 25 Sept 2023 – 4 Oct 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 25 Sept
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 363
- in a single hotspot: 235 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 579MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 690 ha in 2017, 8,051 ha in 2018, 44 ha in 2019, 8,575 ha in 2020, 4,051 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 12,157 ha that had burned before.
- 7,820 ha Mansidão fire, September 2018 21,838 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,188 ha Cotegipe fire, October 2020 12,101 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,797 ha Cotegipe fire, August 2020 5,554 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,772 ha Mansidão fire, September 2021 22,706 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 510 ha Cotegipe fire, August 2021 27,253 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 192 ha Mansidão fire, September 2020 10,870 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
9,633 ha reached on 25 Sept3.1 %
-
Cotegipe 13,063 inhabitants3,262 ha reached on 25 Sept0.8 %
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.
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 Sept | 39.2 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Sept | 38.8 °C | 26 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 27 Sept | 36.5 °C | 33 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 28 Sept | 36.8 °C | 35 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 29 Sept | 39.3 °C | 22 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 30 Sept | 39.0 °C | 15 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 1 Oct | 39.0 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 2 Oct | 39.1 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 3 Oct | 38.8 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 4 Oct | 39.0 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 5 Oct after | 38.0 °C | 27 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Oct after | 37.8 °C | 29 % | 29 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Oct after | 38.0 °C | 26 % | 27 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 43 |
| 8 Oct after | 38.2 °C | 26 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Oct after | 38.7 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 10 Oct after | 39.1 °C | 24 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 11 Oct after | 38.0 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 12 Oct after | 38.7 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 13 Oct after | 39.7 °C | 18 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 14 Oct after | 39.6 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 15 Oct after | 37.9 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 3 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 84 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 363Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 36,357 haMansidão15 October 2025 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 21,838 haMansidão17 September 2018 · 25 days · 7 km away
- 27,253 haCotegipeAugust 2021 · 42 days · 12 km away
- 22,706 haMansidão12 September 2021 · 18 days · 13 km away
- 15,741 haCotegipe8 September 2026 · 17 days · 22 km away
- 24,595 haCotegipeSeptember 2025 · 20 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Mansidão fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 September 2023 and 4 October 2023: 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 12,806 hectares (128.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mansidão (9,633 ha, 3.1 %); Cotegipe (3,262 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.
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
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. 363 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.
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.