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Paranã fire, 4 October 2017 Paranã

Out · last detection 28 Oct 2017, 04:28 UTC

The fire started on 4 October 2017 in Paranã, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 50,120 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 15th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 16 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Paranã · 2016Paranã · 2016Paranã · 2023Paranã · 2019

Burnt area
50,120ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
4 Oct 2017 – 28 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Oct
2017
Heat detections
1,912
in a single hotspot: 156 MW
Danger at start
60
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
571MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Oct28 Oct
28 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

4 Oct 2017 · 189 MW · 27 6 Oct 2017 · 809 MW · 125 7 Oct 2017 · 454 MW · 102 8 Oct 2017 · 368 MW · 59 9 Oct 2017 · 159 MW · 32 10 Oct 2017 · 726 MW · 121 11 Oct 2017 · 1,229 MW · 186 12 Oct 2017 · 3,329 MW · 306 13 Oct 2017 · 1,184 MW · 191 14 Oct 2017 · 779 MW · 134 15 Oct 2017 · 352 MW · 58 16 Oct 2017 · 169 MW · 20 17 Oct 2017 · 1,497 MW · 234 18 Oct 2017 · 553 MW · 107 19 Oct 2017 · 331 MW · 46 20 Oct 2017 · 176 MW · 26 21 Oct 2017 · 757 MW · 37 22 Oct 2017 · 204 MW · 22 23 Oct 2017 · 154 MW · 27 24 Oct 2017 · 94 MW · 14 25 Oct 2017 · 70 MW · 9 26 Oct 2017 · 76 MW · 11 27 Oct 2017 · 40 MW · 16 28 Oct 2017 · 5 MW · 2
4 Oct 9 Oct 12 Oct 13 Oct 17 Oct 21 Oct 25 Oct

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
64km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 30 Oct.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 245 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 32% of the area of London (501 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. Paranã 10,542 inhabitants where it started
    50,449 ha reached on 4 Oct
    4.5 %

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 area0.33 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.33 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)
27 Sept 36.0 °C 22 % 62 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 60
28 Sept 34.5 °C 26 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
29 Sept 36.4 °C 21 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
30 Sept 35.7 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 46
1 Oct 33.5 °C 37 % 36 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
2 Oct 34.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 39
3 Oct 31.3 °C 45 % 48 km/h 1.5 mm High 25
4 Oct 35.3 °C 30 % 43 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
5 Oct 35.8 °C 23 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
6 Oct 36.1 °C 22 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
7 Oct 36.3 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
8 Oct 36.4 °C 20 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
9 Oct 36.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Oct 36.5 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Oct 36.2 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Oct 37.2 °C 14 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Oct 37.6 °C 16 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
14 Oct 38.1 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
15 Oct 37.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Oct 36.6 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Oct 35.4 °C 20 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Oct 35.1 °C 19 % 64 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
19 Oct 35.0 °C 22 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
20 Oct 35.5 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Oct 37.1 °C 17 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
22 Oct 38.1 °C 17 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
23 Oct 35.5 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Oct 37.9 °C 19 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Oct 38.0 °C 18 % 61 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
26 Oct 37.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
27 Oct 36.2 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 49
28 Oct 33.4 °C 40 % 33 km/h 9.5 mm Low 7
29 Oct after 34.2 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
30 Oct after 33.0 °C 38 % 40 km/h 1.3 mm High 22

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 27 Sept 2017
After · 4 Nov 2017

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 · 1,912Every 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 Paranã fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 October 2017 and 28 October 2017: 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 50,120 hectares (501.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Paranã (50,449 ha, 4.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 69, 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.

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
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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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,912 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.