How long did the Pequizeiro fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2024 and 9 September 2024: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,873 hectares (208.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 5 municipalities: Bandeirantes do Tocantins (7,913 ha, 5.1 %); Itaporã do Tocantins (6,686 ha, 6.8 %); Pequizeiro (5,589 ha, 4.6 %); Brasilândia do Tocantins (565 ha, 0.9 %); Colinas do Tocantins (256 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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.

BR · Brazil · 2024-09-04 → 2024-09-09

Pequizeiro fire, September 2024 Bandeirantes do Tocantins, Itaporã do Tocantins, Pequizeiro

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2024, 16:38 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2024 in Pequizeiro, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 20,873 hectares from heat detections, spread across 5 municipalities.

It is the 58th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 141 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pequizeiro · 2020 Bandeirantes do Tocantins · 2020 Itaporã do Tocantins · 2020 Bandeirantes do Tocantins · 2019

Burnt area: 20,873ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 4 Sept 2024 – 9 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 5; municipalities
Started on: 4 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 661; in a single hotspot: 515 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2.4GW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept9 Sept

Play back 9 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

4 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 9 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

49km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

9% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,884 ha in 2020.

1,884 ha Pequizeiro fire, September 2020 5,439 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 13% of the area of London (209 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

Bandeirantes do Tocantins 3,407 inhabitants

7,913 ha reached on 4 Sept

5.1 %
Itaporã do Tocantins 2,404 inhabitants

6,686 ha reached on 6 Sept

6.8 %
Pequizeiro 4,921 inhabitants where it started

5,589 ha reached on 2 Sept

4.6 %
Brasilândia do Tocantins 1,974 inhabitants

565 ha reached on 4 Sept

0.9 %
Colinas do Tocantins 34,233 inhabitants

256 ha reached on 6 Sept

0.3 %

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 2025

Built-up area3.0 ha

Residents≈ 200

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.0 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
2 Sept	37.2 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
3 Sept	36.9 °C	22 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
4 Sept	38.4 °C	13 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
5 Sept	38.0 °C	12 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
6 Sept	37.3 °C	17 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
7 Sept	37.5 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
8 Sept	37.6 °C	20 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
9 Sept	36.8 °C	22 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
10 Sept after	37.2 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
11 Sept after	37.5 °C	22 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
12 Sept after	37.7 °C	21 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
13 Sept after	37.6 °C	20 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 57
14 Sept after	37.2 °C	21 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
15 Sept after	37.7 °C	20 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
16 Sept after	37.9 °C	23 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
17 Sept after	38.3 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Sept after	37.1 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 50
19 Sept after	37.7 °C	19 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
20 Sept after	38.1 °C	21 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
21 Sept after	37.2 °C	26 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
22 Sept after	38.0 °C	26 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Aug 2024

After · 16 Sept 2024

Before After

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 7 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 116 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 71: 4.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak116 µg/m³

Days over the guideline6 days

PM10166 µg/m³

Optical depth0.95

WHO 15

31123456789101112131415

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 · 661Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Pequizeiro fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2024 and 9 September 2024: 6 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 20,873 hectares (208.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 5 municipalities: Bandeirantes do Tocantins (7,913 ha, 5.1 %); Itaporã do Tocantins (6,686 ha, 6.8 %); Pequizeiro (5,589 ha, 4.6 %); Brasilândia do Tocantins (565 ha, 0.9 %); Colinas do Tocantins (256 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 661 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned