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Pium fire, 4 September 2019 Pium

Out · last detection 12 Sept 2019, 16:37 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2019 in Pium, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,931 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 179th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 140 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Burnt area
10,931ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
4 Sept 2019 – 11 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Sept
2019
Heat detections
314
in a single hotspot: 146 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
4.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

12 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept11 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

456789101112

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
46km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 399 ha in 2016, 6,240 ha in 2017, 631 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,631 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Pium 7,128 inhabitants where it started
    11,020 ha reached on 4 Sept
    1.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
4 Sept 39.1 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Sept 38.3 °C 25 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept 37.7 °C 25 % 39 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
7 Sept 37.5 °C 19 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Sept 37.5 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Sept 38.0 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Sept 38.6 °C 23 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
11 Sept 38.9 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept after 38.8 °C 23 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Sept after 40.0 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Sept after 38.0 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Sept after 37.0 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Sept after 38.6 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Sept after 38.5 °C 24 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Sept after 38.0 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Sept after 37.9 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Sept after 38.5 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Sept after 38.1 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
22 Sept after 38.2 °C 33 % 20 km/h 0.2 mm High 37
23 Sept after 37.1 °C 39 % 24 km/h 0.5 mm High 34
24 Sept after 38.8 °C 23 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2019
After · 18 Sept 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 · 314Every 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 4 September 2019 and 11 September 2019: 8 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 10,931 hectares (109.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pium (11,020 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.