Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Parnarama fire, 24 September 2017 Matões, Parnarama

Out · last detection 4 Oct 2017, 16:13 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2017 in Parnarama, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,787 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 77th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 213 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Matões · 2016Matões · 2016Matões · 2016Caxias · 2016

Burnt area
8,787ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
24 Sept 2017 – 4 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
24 Sept
2017
Heat detections
288
in a single hotspot: 168 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
454MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept4 Oct
4 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

24 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 1 25 Sept 2017 · 442 MW · 13 26 Sept 2017 · 2,020 MW · 117 27 Sept 2017 · 1,260 MW · 108 28 Sept 2017 · 650 MW · 16 30 Sept 2017 · 67 MW · 13 1 Oct 2017 · 41 MW · 9 2 Oct 2017 · 13 MW · 6 3 Oct 2017 · 23 MW · 4 4 Oct 2017 · 16 MW · 1
24 Sept 26 Sept 28 Sept 1 Oct 3 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
44km/h · peak gust
27%lowest humidity

It had gone 48 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,388 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.5% of the area of London (88 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. Matões 32,174 inhabitants
    8,817 ha reached on 24 Sept
    4.2 %
  2. Parnarama 31,250 inhabitants where it started
    28 ha reached on 30 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area2.4 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.4 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (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)
24 Sept 35.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Sept 34.9 °C 35 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Sept 35.9 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Sept 36.3 °C 33 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Sept 36.9 °C 34 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Sept 36.7 °C 34 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Sept 36.7 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
1 Oct 37.4 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Oct 37.6 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Oct 37.0 °C 35 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Oct 37.1 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Oct after 36.3 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Oct after 36.6 °C 35 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Oct after 35.7 °C 34 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Oct after 37.1 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
9 Oct after 36.7 °C 33 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
10 Oct after 35.6 °C 41 % 25 km/h 0.4 mm High 31
11 Oct after 36.3 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.5 mm High 35
12 Oct after 36.7 °C 36 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Oct after 37.2 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Sept 2017
After · 11 Oct 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 · 288Every 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 Parnarama fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 September 2017 to 4 October 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 September 2017 to 2 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,787 hectares (87.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Matões (8,817 ha, 4.2 %); Parnarama (28 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
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 24 September 2017 to 2 October 2017. 288 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.