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Pium fire, 5 September 2017 Pium, Lagoa da Confusão

Out · last detection 15 Sept 2017, 17:09 UTC

The fire started on 5 September 2017 in Pium, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,521 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 144th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 130 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Lagoa da Confusão · 2016Lagoa da Confusão · 2016Pium · 2017Lagoa da Confusão · 2024

Burnt area
12,521ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
5 Sept 2017 – 14 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
5 Sept
2017
Heat detections
315
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
360MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Sept14 Sept
15 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2017 · 82 MW · 10 6 Sept 2017 · 180 MW · 22 7 Sept 2017 · 40 MW · 11 8 Sept 2017 · 34 MW · 4 10 Sept 2017 · 1,448 MW · 109 11 Sept 2017 · 765 MW · 55 12 Sept 2017 · 641 MW · 60 13 Sept 2017 · 244 MW · 24 14 Sept 2017 · 141 MW · 17 15 Sept 2017 · 25 MW · 3
5 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 12 Sept 14 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

40°high
48km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

72% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 9,064 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.9% of the area of London (125 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. Pium 7,128 inhabitants where it started
    8,379 ha
    0.8 %
  2. Lagoa da Confusão 15,288 inhabitants
    4,231 ha
    0.4 %

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.

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)
5 Sept 37.1 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Sept 38.0 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
7 Sept 38.5 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Sept 37.3 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Sept 39.2 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Sept 39.0 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Sept 40.1 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Sept 38.6 °C 22 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Sept 37.7 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
14 Sept 38.5 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Sept after 38.9 °C 18 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
16 Sept after 38.3 °C 18 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
17 Sept after 37.9 °C 20 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
18 Sept after 38.7 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Sept after 39.8 °C 20 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
20 Sept after 39.1 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Sept after 35.3 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
22 Sept after 38.2 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Sept after 38.6 °C 22 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Sept after 39.2 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Aug 2017
After · 21 Sept 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 · 0Every 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 Pium fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 5 September 2017 and 14 September 2017: 10 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 12,521 hectares (125.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pium (8,379 ha, 0.8 %); Lagoa da Confusão (4,231 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

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.