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Parnaguá fire, October 2022 Parnaguá, Santa Rita de Cássia

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

The fire started on 7 October 2022 in Parnaguá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,882 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 73th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 77 in Brazil in 2022, of 687.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Parnaguá · 2022Júlio Borges · 2022Santa Rita de Cássia · 2021Parnaguá · 2023

Burnt area
12,882ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
7 Oct 2022 – 22 Oct 2022
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
7 Oct
2022
Heat detections
714
in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
379MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct22 Oct
22 Oct 2022

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 2022 · 10 MW · 1 8 Oct 2022 · 114 MW · 9 9 Oct 2022 · 55 MW · 8 10 Oct 2022 · 233 MW · 20 11 Oct 2022 · 328 MW · 40 12 Oct 2022 · 403 MW · 37 13 Oct 2022 · 81 MW · 15 14 Oct 2022 · 612 MW · 34 15 Oct 2022 · 1,278 MW · 145 16 Oct 2022 · 421 MW · 68 17 Oct 2022 · 583 MW · 75 18 Oct 2022 · 462 MW · 44 19 Oct 2022 · 917 MW · 84 20 Oct 2022 · 259 MW · 75 21 Oct 2022 · 126 MW · 38 22 Oct 2022 · 176 MW · 21
7 Oct 10 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct 16 Oct 19 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

37°high
46km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.3 mm on 24 Oct.

This area had burned before

0% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 20 ha in 2019.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.1% of the area of London (129 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
    12,326 ha reached on 8 Oct
    3.6 %
  2. Santa Rita de Cássia 27,390 inhabitants
    647 ha reached on 7 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 area0.38 ha
Residents≈ 70

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.38 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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)
7 Oct 36.0 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Oct 36.3 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Oct 36.6 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Oct 34.6 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Oct 35.4 °C 15 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Oct 34.3 °C 19 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
13 Oct 35.0 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
14 Oct 36.3 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Oct 35.4 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Oct 35.0 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Oct 35.5 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
18 Oct 36.6 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
19 Oct 36.2 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Oct 36.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Oct 36.0 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Oct 35.8 °C 22 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Oct after 33.3 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
24 Oct after 33.0 °C 35 % 35 km/h 6.3 mm Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 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 13 October 2022 the air beside the fire reached 89 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 31: 2.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak89 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10128 µg/m³
Optical depth0.75
678910111213141516171819202122232425
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 · 714Every 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 7 October 2022 to 22 October 2022 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 8 October 2022 to 22 October 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,882 hectares (128.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Parnaguá (12,326 ha, 3.6 %); Santa Rita de Cássia (647 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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: 8 October 2022 → 7 October 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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 8 October 2022 to 22 October 2022. 714 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.