How long did the Ponte Alta do Tocantins fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 August 2016 to 21 August 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2016 to 17 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,721 hectares (47.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ponte Alta do Tocantins (4,666 ha, 0.7 %); Pindorama do Tocantins (88 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 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.

BR · Brazil · 2016-08-02 → 2016-08-21

Ponte Alta do Tocantins fire, 2 August 2016 Ponte Alta do Tocantins, Pindorama do Tocantins

Out · last detection 21 Aug 2016, 17:21 UTC

The fire started on 2 August 2016 in Ponte Alta do Tocantins, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,721 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 646th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 307 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Almas · 2026 Almas · 2022 Almas · 2025 Almas · 2020

Burnt area: 4,721ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 2 Aug 2016 – 21 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 2 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 153; in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 147MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Aug21 Aug

Play back 21 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

2 Aug 7 Aug 10 Aug 13 Aug 16 Aug 21 Aug

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

45km/h · peak gust

15%lowest humidity

It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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

Ponte Alta do Tocantins 7,586 inhabitants where it started

4,666 ha reached on 2 Aug

0.7 %
Pindorama do Tocantins 4,478 inhabitants

88 ha reached on 2 Aug

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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	Danger (FWI)
2 Aug	33.1 °C	28 %	38 km/h	Very high 44
3 Aug	33.8 °C	27 %	40 km/h	Very high 45
4 Aug	34.0 °C	25 %	42 km/h	Very high 47
5 Aug	33.5 °C	22 %	45 km/h	Very high 49
6 Aug	33.2 °C	26 %	39 km/h	Very high 45
7 Aug	34.6 °C	23 %	32 km/h	Very high 42
8 Aug	35.2 °C	21 %	35 km/h	Very high 43
9 Aug	36.2 °C	19 %	30 km/h	Very high 41
10 Aug	36.6 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 44
11 Aug	37.6 °C	15 %	18 km/h	Very high 41
12 Aug	36.3 °C	17 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
13 Aug	36.1 °C	27 %	45 km/h	Extreme 51
14 Aug	36.1 °C	25 %	35 km/h	Very high 46
15 Aug	36.7 °C	29 %	37 km/h	Very high 46
16 Aug	36.4 °C	25 %	32 km/h	Very high 43
17 Aug	36.8 °C	24 %	21 km/h	High 37
18 Aug	38.0 °C	21 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
19 Aug	38.3 °C	18 %	41 km/h	Extreme 51
20 Aug	36.5 °C	21 %	40 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Aug	37.8 °C	19 %	26 km/h	Very high 45
22 Aug after	36.0 °C	24 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
23 Aug after	36.0 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Aug after	35.5 °C	27 %	40 km/h	Very high 46
25 Aug after	34.8 °C	27 %	49 km/h	Extreme 54
26 Aug after	35.0 °C	25 %	39 km/h	Very high 48
27 Aug after	35.4 °C	24 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
28 Aug after	34.8 °C	30 %	42 km/h	Very high 47
29 Aug after	35.5 °C	20 %	40 km/h	Very high 48
30 Aug after	36.4 °C	22 %	40 km/h	Very high 47
31 Aug after	36.5 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Jul 2016

After · 28 Aug 2016

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.

Detections table · 153Every 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 Ponte Alta do Tocantins fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 August 2016 to 21 August 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 August 2016 to 17 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,721 hectares (47.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ponte Alta do Tocantins (4,666 ha, 0.7 %); Pindorama do Tocantins (88 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 45 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

INPE · Programa Queimadas ↗
IBAMA · Prevfogo ↗

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 17 August 2016 → 21 August 2016.

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 2 August 2016 to 17 August 2016. 153 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned