How long did the Ribeira do Piauí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2024 to 25 September 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2024 to 22 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,658 hectares (36.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Ribeira do Piauí (3,683 ha, 3.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2024-09-13 → 2024-09-25

Ribeira do Piauí fire, 13 September 2024 Ribeira do Piauí

Out · last detection 25 Sept 2024, 16:37 UTC

The fire started on 13 September 2024 in Ribeira do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,658 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 583th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 1013 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeira do Piauí · 2020 São João do Piauí · 2021 Pedro Laurentino · 2024 João Costa · 2020

Burnt area: 3,658ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 13 Sept 2024 – 25 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 13 Sept; 2024
Heat detections: 135; in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 349MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Sept25 Sept

Play back 25 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

14 Sept 16 Sept 18 Sept 20 Sept 25 Sept

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

39°high

51km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 242 ha in 2019, 1,784 ha in 2020, 734 ha in 2022, 727 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,474 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.3% of the area of London (37 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

Ribeira do Piauí 4,055 inhabitants where it started

3,683 ha reached on 14 Sept

3.6 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area1.9 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.9 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
13 Sept	35.5 °C	23 %	51 km/h	Extreme 60
14 Sept	35.8 °C	22 %	42 km/h	Extreme 52
15 Sept	37.0 °C	21 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
16 Sept	38.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
17 Sept	39.0 °C	17 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
18 Sept	37.1 °C	19 %	47 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Sept	36.5 °C	24 %	44 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Sept	37.7 °C	19 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
21 Sept	37.7 °C	19 %	41 km/h	Extreme 53
22 Sept	38.0 °C	20 %	44 km/h	Extreme 55
23 Sept	37.9 °C	21 %	42 km/h	Extreme 54
24 Sept	37.4 °C	23 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
25 Sept	35.9 °C	25 %	44 km/h	Extreme 52
26 Sept after	36.5 °C	21 %	43 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Sept after	37.7 °C	20 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
28 Sept after	39.4 °C	18 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
29 Sept after	37.4 °C	25 %	50 km/h	Extreme 53
30 Sept after	37.6 °C	22 %	48 km/h	Extreme 56
1 Oct after	37.1 °C	16 %	45 km/h	Extreme 56
2 Oct after	38.2 °C	16 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
3 Oct after	38.7 °C	20 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
4 Oct after	38.2 °C	22 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
5 Oct after	39.0 °C	20 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Sept 2024

After · 2 Oct 2024

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 19 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 22 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak22 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1032 µg/m³

Optical depth0.55

WHO 15

111213141516171819202122232425

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 · 135Every 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 Ribeira do Piauí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2024 to 25 September 2024 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2024 to 22 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,658 hectares (36.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Ribeira do Piauí (3,683 ha, 3.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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: 22 September 2024 → 25 September 2024.

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 13 September 2024 to 22 September 2024. 135 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 2025, 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