How long did the Mucajaí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 March 2019 to 7 April 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 March 2019 to 6 April 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,044 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mucajaí (4,070 ha, 0.3 %); Alto Alegre (2 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2019-03-18 → 2019-04-07

Mucajaí fire, 18 March 2019 Mucajaí, Alto Alegre

Out · last detection 7 Apr 2019, 17:43 UTC

The fire started on 18 March 2019 in Mucajaí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,044 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 74th largest in Roraima since 2016 (of 121 with a page). Number 630 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.5 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mucajaí · 2016 Mucajaí · 2019 Alto Alegre · 2019 Mucajaí · 2024

Burnt area: 4,044ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 18 Mar 2019 – 7 Apr 2019
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 18 Mar; 2019
Heat detections: 230; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 49MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Mar7 Apr

Play back 7 Apr 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Mar 24 Mar 27 Mar 30 Mar 2 Apr 3 Apr 7 Apr

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

41km/h · peak gust

28%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.5 mm on 14 Apr.

This area had burned before

4% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 165 ha in 2016.

165 ha Mucajaí fire, March 2016 12,416 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (40 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

Mucajaí 18,095 inhabitants where it started

4,070 ha reached on 19 Mar

0.3 %
Alto Alegre 21,096 inhabitants

2 ha

0.0 %

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)
19 Mar	35.9 °C	32 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
20 Mar	36.9 °C	31 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Mar	36.5 °C	35 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
22 Mar	36.4 °C	33 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
23 Mar	36.2 °C	32 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
24 Mar	37.5 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
25 Mar	36.2 °C	35 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
26 Mar	35.5 °C	33 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
27 Mar	37.2 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
28 Mar	37.2 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	High 36
29 Mar	36.7 °C	34 %	41 km/h	2.9 mm	Moderate 18
30 Mar	34.0 °C	49 %	32 km/h	6.9 mm	Very low 4
31 Mar	36.4 °C	38 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 19
1 Apr	37.3 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
2 Apr	37.3 °C	32 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
3 Apr	35.6 °C	36 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Apr	35.3 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
5 Apr	36.3 °C	33 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
6 Apr	36.2 °C	30 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
7 Apr	36.3 °C	32 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
8 Apr after	34.7 °C	38 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
9 Apr after	35.0 °C	36 %	22 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
10 Apr after	34.3 °C	43 %	31 km/h	3.0 mm	Low 9
11 Apr after	33.1 °C	46 %	36 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 18
12 Apr after	35.3 °C	43 %	41 km/h	2.7 mm	Moderate 12
13 Apr after	35.9 °C	39 %	38 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 18
14 Apr after	35.5 °C	41 %	46 km/h	2.5 mm	Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 11 Mar 2019

After · 14 Apr 2019

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 · 230Every 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 Mucajaí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 March 2019 to 7 April 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 March 2019 to 6 April 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,044 hectares (40.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Mucajaí (4,070 ha, 0.3 %); Alto Alegre (2 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 6 April 2019 → 7 April 2019.
25 October 2026 Start date: 24 March 2019 → 18 March 2019.

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 24 March 2019 to 6 April 2019. 230 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.

Where it burned