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Mucajaí fire, 14 March 2016 Mucajaí

Out · last detection 27 Mar 2016, 05:40 UTC

The fire started on 14 March 2016 in Mucajaí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 22,729 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 7th largest in Roraima since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 19 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mucajaí · 2024Mucajaí · 2024Mucajaí · 2016Mucajaí · 2019

Burnt area
22,729ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
14 Mar 2016 – 27 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Mar
2016
Heat detections
1,017
in a single hotspot: 289 MW
Danger at start
9
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
880MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Mar27 Mar
27 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Mar 2016 · 66 MW · 5 15 Mar 2016 · 9 MW · 4 17 Mar 2016 · 573 MW · 82 18 Mar 2016 · 48 MW · 21 19 Mar 2016 · 35 MW · 10 21 Mar 2016 · 720 MW · 35 22 Mar 2016 · 1,453 MW · 129 23 Mar 2016 · 3,926 MW · 242 24 Mar 2016 · 2,924 MW · 297 25 Mar 2016 · 558 MW · 115 26 Mar 2016 · 195 MW · 57 27 Mar 2016 · 49 MW · 20
14 Mar 17 Mar 19 Mar 22 Mar 23 Mar 24 Mar 26 Mar

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high
51km/h · peak gust
30%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.0 mm on 28 Mar.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (227 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. Mucajaí 18,095 inhabitants where it started
    22,884 ha reached on 14 Mar
    1.8 %

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 area4.5 ha
Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.5 hectares of built-up land and about 700 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)
14 Mar 33.4 °C 41 % 41 km/h 1.1 mm Low 9
15 Mar 33.4 °C 42 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
16 Mar 37.3 °C 32 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
17 Mar 35.2 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.1 mm High 22
18 Mar 35.8 °C 39 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
19 Mar 33.9 °C 45 % 45 km/h 0.9 mm Moderate 17
20 Mar 35.6 °C 41 % 44 km/h 0.4 mm High 22
21 Mar 36.0 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
22 Mar 36.1 °C 35 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Mar 36.1 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
24 Mar 35.9 °C 34 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
25 Mar 35.9 °C 30 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
26 Mar 35.1 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
27 Mar 35.0 °C 41 % 49 km/h 0.6 mm High 26
28 Mar after 31.0 °C 57 % 43 km/h 4.0 mm Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Mar 2016
After · 3 Apr 2016

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 · 1,017Every 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 Mucajaí fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 March 2016 to 27 March 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 March 2016 to 27 March 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 22,729 hectares (227.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mucajaí (22,884 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 19 March 2016 → 14 March 2016.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 19 March 2016 to 27 March 2016. 1,017 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.