Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Oeiras fire, September 2020 Colônia do Piauí, Oeiras

Out · last detection 28 Sept 2020, 15:35 UTC

The fire started on 3 September 2020 in Oeiras, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,621 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 111th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 186 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Colônia do Piauí · 2018Oeiras · 2023Oeiras · 2026Santo Inácio do Piauí · 2018

Burnt area
10,621ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
3 Sept 2020 – 27 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
3 Sept
2020
Heat detections
493
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
56
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
140MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Sept27 Sept
28 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

3 Sept 2020 · 107 MW · 10 4 Sept 2020 · 116 MW · 24 5 Sept 2020 · 221 MW · 24 6 Sept 2020 · 176 MW · 14 7 Sept 2020 · 312 MW · 26 8 Sept 2020 · 68 MW · 21 9 Sept 2020 · 222 MW · 13 10 Sept 2020 · 16 MW · 5 11 Sept 2020 · 168 MW · 22 12 Sept 2020 · 64 MW · 5 13 Sept 2020 · 110 MW · 18 14 Sept 2020 · 281 MW · 42 15 Sept 2020 · 259 MW · 34 16 Sept 2020 · 330 MW · 26 17 Sept 2020 · 112 MW · 33 18 Sept 2020 · 208 MW · 36 19 Sept 2020 · 265 MW · 35 20 Sept 2020 · 100 MW · 21 21 Sept 2020 · 52 MW · 13 22 Sept 2020 · 97 MW · 13 23 Sept 2020 · 22 MW · 8 24 Sept 2020 · 74 MW · 15 25 Sept 2020 · 110 MW · 16 26 Sept 2020 · 112 MW · 12 27 Sept 2020 · 18 MW · 2 28 Sept 2020 · 20 MW · 5
3 Sept 7 Sept 11 Sept 15 Sept 16 Sept 19 Sept 23 Sept 27 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

38°high
51km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (106 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. Colônia do Piauí 6,994 inhabitants
    5,939 ha
    6.2 %
  2. Oeiras 38,161 inhabitants where it started
    4,752 ha
    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 2020
Built-up area0.68 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.68 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
3 Sept 35.8 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Sept 35.5 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Sept 36.2 °C 14 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Sept 35.1 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Sept 36.2 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Sept 36.0 °C 24 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Sept 36.0 °C 21 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Sept 36.2 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 35.8 °C 25 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Sept 35.8 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
13 Sept 35.7 °C 19 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Sept 35.9 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Sept 35.6 °C 24 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
16 Sept 36.8 °C 24 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
17 Sept 37.0 °C 23 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
18 Sept 37.8 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept 37.4 °C 24 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Sept 37.8 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Sept 37.8 °C 25 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Sept 38.2 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
25 Sept 37.4 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Sept 35.3 °C 24 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Sept 37.1 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
28 Sept after 37.9 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Sept after 38.6 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Sept after 38.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
1 Oct after 37.4 °C 15 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
2 Oct after 37.8 °C 16 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
3 Oct after 38.2 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
4 Oct after 39.1 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Oct after 39.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
6 Oct after 38.9 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Oct after 38.9 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Aug 2020
After · 4 Oct 2020

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 · 0Every 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 Oeiras fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 September 2020 and 27 September 2020: 25 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 10,621 hectares (106.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Colônia do Piauí (5,939 ha, 6.2 %); Oeiras (4,752 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 October 2020 → 27 September 2020.
  2. Start date: 29 August 2020 → 3 September 2020.
  3. Last day with fire: 27 September 2020 → 1 October 2020.
  4. Start date: 3 September 2020 → 29 August 2020.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.