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Poconé fire, 5 October 2021 Poconé, Cáceres

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2021, 17:52 UTC

The fire started on 5 October 2021 in Poconé, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,246 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 589th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 199 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cáceres · 2020Cáceres · 2021Cáceres · 2024Poconé · 2023

Burnt area
8,246ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
5 Oct 2021 – 15 Oct 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
5 Oct
2021
Heat detections
261
in a single hotspot: 269 MW
Danger at start
20
Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power
643MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Oct15 Oct
15 Oct 2021

How it evolved, day by day

5 Oct 2021 · 1,696 MW · 85 6 Oct 2021 · 21 MW · 2 7 Oct 2021 · 2,909 MW · 61 8 Oct 2021 · 415 MW · 54 9 Oct 2021 · 90 MW · 12 10 Oct 2021 · 136 MW · 22 11 Oct 2021 · 6 MW · 3 13 Oct 2021 · 97 MW · 6 15 Oct 2021 · 419 MW · 16
5 Oct 7 Oct 9 Oct 11 Oct 15 Oct

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
59km/h · peak gust
31%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 18 Oct.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,361 ha in 2020.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.2% of the area of London (82 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. Poconé 31,217 inhabitants where it started
    6,036 ha reached on 5 Oct
    0.4 %
  2. Cáceres 89,681 inhabitants
    2,250 ha reached on 7 Oct
    0.1 %

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)
5 Oct 33.2 °C 47 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
6 Oct 38.0 °C 38 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 36.7 °C 40 % 27 km/h 0.3 mm High 30
8 Oct 37.8 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.9 mm High 22
9 Oct 37.2 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
10 Oct 37.9 °C 35 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Oct 35.9 °C 42 % 27 km/h 0.4 mm High 29
12 Oct 36.5 °C 46 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
13 Oct 39.6 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
14 Oct 36.2 °C 42 % 47 km/h 1.8 mm High 26
15 Oct 38.8 °C 34 % 59 km/h 4.5 mm High 21
16 Oct after 31.5 °C 52 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
17 Oct after 33.7 °C 41 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
18 Oct after 32.8 °C 48 % 31 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Sept 2021
After · 22 Oct 2021

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 · 261Every 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 Poconé fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 October 2021 to 15 October 2021 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 October 2021 to 13 October 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,246 hectares (82.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Poconé (6,036 ha, 0.4 %); Cáceres (2,250 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.6 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 13 October 2021 → 15 October 2021.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 October 2021 to 13 October 2021. 261 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.