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Parnaguá fire, September 2022 Parnaguá, Sebastião Barros, Santa Rita de Cássia

Out · last detection 22 Oct 2022, 16:38 UTC

The fire started on 27 September 2022 in Parnaguá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,201 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 11th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 11 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parnaguá · 2019Corrente · 2017Santa Rita de Cássia · 2021Sebastião Barros · 2019

Burnt area
33,201ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
27 Sept 2022 – 22 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
3
municipalities
Started on
27 Sept
2022
Heat detections
1,521
in a single hotspot: 395 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
891MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Sept22 Oct
22 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

27 Sept 2022 · 177 MW · 6 28 Sept 2022 · 2 MW · 2 30 Sept 2022 · 2,035 MW · 43 1 Oct 2022 · 3,050 MW · 117 2 Oct 2022 · 359 MW · 39 3 Oct 2022 · 99 MW · 27 4 Oct 2022 · 1,210 MW · 102 5 Oct 2022 · 1,730 MW · 73 6 Oct 2022 · 963 MW · 100 7 Oct 2022 · 1,322 MW · 60 8 Oct 2022 · 347 MW · 28 9 Oct 2022 · 439 MW · 47 10 Oct 2022 · 1,248 MW · 84 11 Oct 2022 · 459 MW · 56 12 Oct 2022 · 1,172 MW · 118 13 Oct 2022 · 642 MW · 46 14 Oct 2022 · 2,081 MW · 93 15 Oct 2022 · 2,122 MW · 162 16 Oct 2022 · 1,008 MW · 116 17 Oct 2022 · 642 MW · 70 18 Oct 2022 · 704 MW · 56 19 Oct 2022 · 162 MW · 37 20 Oct 2022 · 103 MW · 15 21 Oct 2022 · 31 MW · 13 22 Oct 2022 · 168 MW · 11
27 Sept 1 Oct 2 Oct 6 Oct 10 Oct 14 Oct 18 Oct 22 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
42km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.1 mm on 23 Oct.

This area had burned before

32% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,002 ha in 2017, 6,109 ha in 2019, 1,546 ha in 2020, 122 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 21% of the area of London (332 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
    21,180 ha reached on 27 Sept
    6.1 %
  2. Sebastião Barros 3,202 inhabitants
    11,629 ha reached on 6 Oct
    13 %
  3. Santa Rita de Cássia 27,390 inhabitants
    614 ha reached on 16 Oct
    0.1 %

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 area1.4 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.4 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)
27 Sept 35.9 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Sept 36.1 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Sept 37.5 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Sept 37.3 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
1 Oct 37.0 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
2 Oct 36.8 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
3 Oct 36.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
4 Oct 37.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
5 Oct 38.3 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct 37.7 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Oct 36.8 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Oct 37.3 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
9 Oct 37.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Oct 36.1 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Oct 36.7 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
12 Oct 35.7 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
13 Oct 36.4 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Oct 37.6 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Oct 36.6 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Oct 36.1 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Oct 36.4 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Oct 37.9 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Oct 37.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
20 Oct 37.0 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Oct 36.9 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Oct 37.0 °C 23 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Oct after 34.4 °C 36 % 31 km/h 2.1 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Sept 2022
After · 29 Oct 2022

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10166 µg/m³
Optical depth1.22
28293012345678910111213141516171819202122232425
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 1,521Every 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 27 September 2022 to 22 October 2022 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 September 2022 to 22 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 33,201 hectares (332.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Parnaguá (21,180 ha, 6.1 %); Sebastião Barros (11,629 ha, 13 %); Santa Rita de Cássia (614 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 42 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 30 September 2022 → 27 September 2022.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 September 2022 to 22 October 2022. 1,521 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.