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Parnaguá fire, 16 September 2018 Parnaguá

Out · last detection 11 Oct 2018, 04:02 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2018 in Parnaguá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,711 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 108th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 30 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parnaguá · 2021Curimatá · 2022Parnaguá · 2022Júlio Borges · 2022

Burnt area
10,711ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
16 Sept 2018 – 11 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Sept
2018
Heat detections
655
in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
304MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept11 Oct
11 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2018 · 24 MW · 1 18 Sept 2018 · 21 MW · 4 19 Sept 2018 · 1,389 MW · 80 20 Sept 2018 · 682 MW · 91 21 Sept 2018 · 652 MW · 56 22 Sept 2018 · 1,481 MW · 117 23 Sept 2018 · 727 MW · 112 24 Sept 2018 · 135 MW · 66 25 Sept 2018 · 73 MW · 15 26 Sept 2018 · 151 MW · 17 27 Sept 2018 · 15 MW · 2 28 Sept 2018 · 158 MW · 15 29 Sept 2018 · 424 MW · 23 30 Sept 2018 · 172 MW · 10 1 Oct 2018 · 95 MW · 11 2 Oct 2018 · 51 MW · 8 3 Oct 2018 · 15 MW · 5 4 Oct 2018 · 85 MW · 15 6 Oct 2018 · 8 MW · 1 10 Oct 2018 · 17 MW · 1 11 Oct 2018 · 8 MW · 5
16 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 26 Sept 29 Sept 2 Oct 6 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

39°high
44km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 15 Oct.

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 6.8% of the area of London (107 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. Parnaguá 10,103 inhabitants where it started
    10,778 ha reached on 16 Sept
    3.1 %

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 area0.26 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.26 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
16 Sept 38.2 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
17 Sept 38.2 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 38.2 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Sept 38.5 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Sept 37.4 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Sept 37.2 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Sept 38.8 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Sept 37.7 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Sept 36.4 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept 36.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Sept 37.5 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept 38.7 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Sept 38.9 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Sept 37.3 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
1 Oct 37.5 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Oct 37.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Oct 37.4 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Oct 39.1 °C 24 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Oct 36.7 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
6 Oct 36.1 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
7 Oct 35.9 °C 32 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Oct 37.1 °C 25 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Oct 37.4 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Oct 38.7 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Oct 39.0 °C 21 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Oct after 37.8 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Oct after 38.0 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct after 37.6 °C 30 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Oct after 37.1 °C 35 % 29 km/h 1.7 mm High 25

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2018
After · 18 Oct 2018

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 · 655Every 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 Parnaguá fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 September 2018 to 11 October 2018 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2018 to 4 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,711 hectares (107.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Parnaguá (10,778 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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
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 16 September 2018 to 4 October 2018. 655 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.