How long did the Marianópolis do Tocantins fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2017 to 26 September 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2017 to 25 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,420 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pium (1,959 ha, 0.2 %); Marianópolis do Tocantins (1,482 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2017-09-12 → 2017-09-26

Marianópolis do Tocantins fire, September 2017 Pium, Marianópolis do Tocantins

Out · last detection 26 Sept 2017, 17:03 UTC

The fire started on 12 September 2017 in Marianópolis do Tocantins, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,420 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 1021th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 817 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Caseara · 2024 Marianópolis do Tocantins · 2020 Pium · 2016 Santana do Araguaia · 2024

Burnt area: 3,420ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 12 Sept 2017 – 26 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 12 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 167; in a single hotspot: 132 MW
Danger at start: 59; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 104MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Sept26 Sept

Play back 26 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Sept 14 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 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

49km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 30 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (34 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

Pium 7,128 inhabitants

1,959 ha reached on 12 Sept

0.2 %
Marianópolis do Tocantins 4,615 inhabitants where it started

1,482 ha reached on 12 Sept

0.7 %

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 area0.17 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
12 Sept	39.2 °C	20 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
13 Sept	37.9 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
14 Sept	39.2 °C	18 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
15 Sept	39.6 °C	16 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
16 Sept	38.4 °C	17 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
17 Sept	38.3 °C	18 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
18 Sept	38.9 °C	18 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
19 Sept	40.1 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
20 Sept	39.1 °C	21 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
21 Sept	35.9 °C	24 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
22 Sept	38.6 °C	19 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
23 Sept	38.9 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
24 Sept	39.5 °C	18 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
25 Sept	39.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
26 Sept	38.9 °C	20 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
27 Sept after	39.6 °C	19 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
28 Sept after	38.1 °C	29 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
29 Sept after	39.4 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
30 Sept after	35.6 °C	35 %	38 km/h	1.6 mm	High 27

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Sept 2017

After · 3 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 · 167Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Marianópolis do Tocantins fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 September 2017 to 26 September 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 September 2017 to 25 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,420 hectares (34.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pium (1,959 ha, 0.2 %); Marianópolis do Tocantins (1,482 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 Last day with fire: 25 September 2017 → 26 September 2017.

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.

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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 September 2017 to 25 September 2017. 167 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