How long did the Placas fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,061 hectares (40.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Placas (4,087 ha, 0.6 %).

Is the Placas fire still active?

Yes: satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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.

BR · Brazil · 2026-10-15 → 2026-11-03

Placas fire, 15 October 2026 Placas

Burning · last detection 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2026 in Placas, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,061 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 698th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1112 with a page). Number 501 in Brazil in 2026, of 780.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Uruará · 2026 Uruará · 2023 Placas · 2026 Uruará · 2023

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 4,061ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 15 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 15 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 158; in a single hotspot: 31 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 60MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct3 Nov

Play back 3 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 20 Oct 23 Oct 26 Oct 28 Oct 29 Oct 1 Nov

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

42km/h · peak gust

30%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 3 Nov.

This area had burned before

30% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 172 ha in 2016, 24 ha in 2017, 109 ha in 2020, 970 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.6% of the area of London (41 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

Placas 18,668 inhabitants where it started

4,087 ha reached on 15 Oct

0.6 %

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
15 Oct	35.3 °C	35 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Oct	36.5 °C	34 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Oct	36.5 °C	37 %	27 km/h	1.2 mm	High 24
18 Oct	34.5 °C	45 %	40 km/h	4.7 mm	Low 7
19 Oct	35.4 °C	40 %	30 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 11
20 Oct	35.1 °C	44 %	33 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 9
21 Oct	34.6 °C	50 %	38 km/h	2.0 mm	Low 11
22 Oct	35.5 °C	37 %	42 km/h	0.7 mm	High 22
23 Oct	36.4 °C	34 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	High 26
24 Oct	37.3 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
25 Oct	37.6 °C	36 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 29
26 Oct	34.2 °C	49 %	24 km/h	3.8 mm	Low 6
27 Oct	36.3 °C	35 %	25 km/h	0.4 mm	Moderate 19
28 Oct	36.9 °C	30 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
29 Oct	36.4 °C	39 %	32 km/h	1.1 mm	Moderate 19
30 Oct	35.9 °C	38 %	32 km/h	2.8 mm	Moderate 13
31 Oct	35.6 °C	37 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
1 Nov	36.6 °C	34 %	31 km/h	0.1 mm	High 24
2 Nov	36.5 °C	36 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	High 28
3 Nov	34.1 °C	47 %	38 km/h	2.7 mm	Low 10

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Oct 2026

After · 2 Nov 2026

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 18 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 823 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 265: 18 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak823 µg/m³

Days over the guideline18 days

PM10833 µg/m³

Optical depth4.22

WHO 15

131415161718192021222324252627282930

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 · 158Every 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 Placas fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 October 2026 to 3 November 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,061 hectares (40.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Placas (4,087 ha, 0.6 %).
Is the Placas fire still active?: Yes: satellites detected fire on 3 Nov 2026, 04:57 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 30 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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 ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 3 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 31 October 2026.

2 November 2026 Area: 3,763 → 4,061 ha.
1 November 2026 Area: 3,053 → 3,763 ha.
31 October 2026 Page published (3,053 ha).

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 22 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 158 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.