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Piancó fire, December 2019 Piancó, Olho d'Água

Out · last detection 24 Dec 2019, 16:06 UTC

The fire started on 6 December 2019 in Piancó, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,325 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 825 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Olho d'Água · 2019Olho d'Água · 2021

Burnt area
3,325ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
6 Dec 2019 – 24 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
6 Dec
2019
Heat detections
195
in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start
55
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
129MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Dec24 Dec
24 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

6 Dec 2019 · 270 MW · 22 7 Dec 2019 · 232 MW · 33 8 Dec 2019 · 89 MW · 20 9 Dec 2019 · 18 MW · 4 10 Dec 2019 · 110 MW · 13 11 Dec 2019 · 153 MW · 9 12 Dec 2019 · 213 MW · 11 13 Dec 2019 · 751 MW · 34 14 Dec 2019 · 232 MW · 25 15 Dec 2019 · 29 MW · 4 16 Dec 2019 · 7 MW · 2 17 Dec 2019 · 7 MW · 2 19 Dec 2019 · 5 MW · 1 20 Dec 2019 · 6 MW · 1 22 Dec 2019 · 9 MW · 4 23 Dec 2019 · 21 MW · 4 24 Dec 2019 · 35 MW · 6
6 Dec 9 Dec 12 Dec 13 Dec 15 Dec 19 Dec 23 Dec

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
49km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.1 mm on 31 Dec.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Piancó 16,441 inhabitants where it started
    2,078 ha reached on 6 Dec
    3.6 %
  2. Olho d'Água 6,060 inhabitants
    1,269 ha reached on 7 Dec
    2.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
6 Dec 36.5 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Dec 37.3 °C 21 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Dec 35.7 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.3 mm Very high 50
9 Dec 35.4 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.6 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 36.3 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Dec 35.9 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 44
12 Dec 37.0 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
13 Dec 37.3 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Dec 37.2 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Dec 36.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
16 Dec 35.7 °C 28 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Dec 35.3 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 37.0 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Dec 37.2 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Dec 35.5 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Dec 36.1 °C 20 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Dec 37.3 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
23 Dec 37.3 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Dec 37.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Dec after 37.4 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
26 Dec after 36.7 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
27 Dec after 36.7 °C 20 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
28 Dec after 35.8 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Dec after 35.6 °C 27 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec after 33.4 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.7 mm High 31
31 Dec after 30.7 °C 52 % 26 km/h 19.1 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Nov 2019
After · 31 Dec 2019

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 · 195Every 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 Piancó fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 December 2019 to 24 December 2019 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2019 to 17 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,325 hectares (33.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Piancó (2,078 ha, 3.6 %); Olho d'Água (1,269 ha, 2.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 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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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 6 December 2019 to 17 December 2019. 195 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.