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Parnaguá fire, 9 September 2021 Parnaguá

Out · last detection 1 Oct 2021, 17:15 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2021 in Parnaguá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,541 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 79th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 117 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

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Burnt area
12,541ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
9 Sept 2021 – 2 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2021
Heat detections
664
in a single hotspot: 356 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
534MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept2 Oct
1 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2021 · 765 MW · 7 10 Sept 2021 · 31 MW · 6 11 Sept 2021 · 58 MW · 9 12 Sept 2021 · 302 MW · 20 13 Sept 2021 · 570 MW · 39 14 Sept 2021 · 254 MW · 41 15 Sept 2021 · 807 MW · 65 16 Sept 2021 · 530 MW · 59 17 Sept 2021 · 399 MW · 77 18 Sept 2021 · 827 MW · 35 19 Sept 2021 · 1,869 MW · 21 20 Sept 2021 · 875 MW · 51 21 Sept 2021 · 2,851 MW · 109 22 Sept 2021 · 1,211 MW · 59 23 Sept 2021 · 55 MW · 15 24 Sept 2021 · 17 MW · 3 25 Sept 2021 · 5 MW · 4 26 Sept 2021 · 57 MW · 5 27 Sept 2021 · 129 MW · 22 28 Sept 2021 · 46 MW · 7 29 Sept 2021 · 35 MW · 6 1 Oct 2021 · 47 MW · 4
9 Sept 13 Sept 17 Sept 21 Sept 25 Sept 29 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
45km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

44% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,027 ha in 2016, 804 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,466 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.9% of the area of London (125 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
    12,614 ha reached on 9 Sept
    3.7 %

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 area0.67 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.67 hectares of built-up land and about 150 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)
9 Sept 36.2 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 37.2 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 36.8 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
12 Sept 36.6 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Sept 35.7 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Sept 36.7 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept 37.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
16 Sept 37.2 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
17 Sept 34.7 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Sept 35.2 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Sept 36.4 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Sept 37.8 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Sept 37.5 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Sept 37.9 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Sept 33.8 °C 33 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept 34.1 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
25 Sept 33.8 °C 35 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
26 Sept 34.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Sept 35.6 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Sept 35.7 °C 21 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
29 Sept 35.5 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Sept 34.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
1 Oct 35.7 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Oct 35.4 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Oct after 37.3 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
4 Oct after 37.1 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Oct after 37.7 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Oct after 37.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
7 Oct after 37.8 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Oct after 38.8 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Oct after 36.1 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct after 35.9 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Oct after 31.0 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Oct after 35.5 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.2 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2021
After · 9 Oct 2021

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 · 664Every 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 9 September 2021 to 2 October 2021 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 September 2021 to 1 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,541 hectares (125.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Parnaguá (12,614 ha, 3.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 1 October 2021 → 2 October 2021.

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 9 September 2021 to 1 October 2021. 664 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.