Skip to content
worldfires
en
BR · Brazil · →

Pontes e Lacerda fire, July 2019 Pontes e Lacerda

Out · last detection 16 Aug 2019, 18:23 UTC

The fire started on 19 July 2019 in Pontes e Lacerda, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 29 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,281 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 250th largest in Mato Grosso since 2016 (of 1996 with a page). Number 74 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pontes e Lacerda · 2021Pontes e Lacerda · 2023Pontes e Lacerda · 2020Pontes e Lacerda · 2025

Burnt area
16,281ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
29days
19 Jul 2019 – 16 Aug 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
19 Jul
2019
Heat detections
615
in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start
25
High · FWI index
Average daily power
108MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Jul16 Aug
16 Aug 2019

How it evolved, day by day

19 Jul 2019 · 86 MW · 18 20 Jul 2019 · 15 MW · 4 22 Jul 2019 · 58 MW · 10 23 Jul 2019 · 123 MW · 32 24 Jul 2019 · 489 MW · 18 25 Jul 2019 · 98 MW · 12 26 Jul 2019 · 72 MW · 32 27 Jul 2019 · 42 MW · 21 28 Jul 2019 · 115 MW · 18 29 Jul 2019 · 87 MW · 15 30 Jul 2019 · 27 MW · 11 31 Jul 2019 · 152 MW · 13 1 Aug 2019 · 92 MW · 11 2 Aug 2019 · 124 MW · 48 3 Aug 2019 · 50 MW · 24 4 Aug 2019 · 310 MW · 44 5 Aug 2019 · 181 MW · 71 6 Aug 2019 · 61 MW · 22 7 Aug 2019 · 75 MW · 34 8 Aug 2019 · 41 MW · 13 9 Aug 2019 · 88 MW · 11 10 Aug 2019 · 31 MW · 12 11 Aug 2019 · 136 MW · 22 12 Aug 2019 · 165 MW · 46 13 Aug 2019 · 163 MW · 42 14 Aug 2019 · 53 MW · 5 15 Aug 2019 · 4 MW · 1 16 Aug 2019 · 77 MW · 5
19 Jul 24 Jul 28 Jul 1 Aug 5 Aug 9 Aug 13 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

35°high
49km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.6 mm on 23 Aug.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 525 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (163 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. Pontes e Lacerda where it started
    16,389 ha reached on 19 Jul
    1.9 %

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 area0.37 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of 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)
19 Jul 33.5 °C 33 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
20 Jul 33.4 °C 33 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
21 Jul 32.0 °C 37 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Jul 32.7 °C 37 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
23 Jul 33.7 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
24 Jul 28.5 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
25 Jul 21.6 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
26 Jul 25.0 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 21
27 Jul 26.5 °C 43 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
28 Jul 30.1 °C 41 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
29 Jul 31.6 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
30 Jul 32.7 °C 36 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
31 Jul 32.9 °C 29 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Aug 34.0 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Aug 26.3 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
3 Aug 17.5 °C 36 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Aug 23.8 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Aug 27.6 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
6 Aug 32.1 °C 32 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Aug 33.7 °C 34 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Aug 34.1 °C 31 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Aug 33.4 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Aug 29.5 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
11 Aug 34.6 °C 22 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Aug 34.7 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
13 Aug 29.7 °C 42 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Aug 25.5 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
15 Aug 31.9 °C 32 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
16 Aug 34.7 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
17 Aug after 34.8 °C 31 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Aug after 32.5 °C 46 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
19 Aug after 29.1 °C 51 % 25 km/h 0.4 mm High 23
20 Aug after 30.1 °C 41 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
21 Aug after 33.3 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
22 Aug after 36.0 °C 34 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Aug after 32.5 °C 40 % 31 km/h 1.6 mm Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Jul 2019
After · 23 Aug 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 · 615Every 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 Pontes e Lacerda fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 July 2019 to 16 August 2019 (29 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 July 2019 to 15 August 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 16,281 hectares (162.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pontes e Lacerda (16,389 ha, 1.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 15 August 2019 → 16 August 2019.
  2. Start date: 22 July 2019 → 19 July 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 July 2019 to 15 August 2019. 615 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.