How long did the Ribeiro Gonçalves fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2016 to 1 September 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2016 to 29 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,252 hectares (52.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ribeiro Gonçalves (5,192 ha, 1.3 %); Tasso Fragoso (97 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 · 2016-08-19 → 2016-09-01

Ribeiro Gonçalves fire, August 2016 Ribeiro Gonçalves, Tasso Fragoso

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2016, 17:15 UTC

The fire started on 19 August 2016 in Ribeiro Gonçalves, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 315th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 251 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2025 Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2026 Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2026 Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2023

Burnt area: 5,252ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 19 Aug 2016 – 1 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 19 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 199; in a single hotspot: 84 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 191MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Aug1 Sept

Play back 1 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

20 Aug 22 Aug 24 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 1 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

38°high

48km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months 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 3.3% of the area of London (53 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

Ribeiro Gonçalves where it started

5,192 ha reached on 20 Aug

1.3 %
Tasso Fragoso 8,862 inhabitants

97 ha reached on 25 Aug

0.0 %

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 area0.34 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.34 hectares of 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)
19 Aug	37.0 °C	23 %	38 km/h	Very high 48
20 Aug	35.3 °C	24 %	40 km/h	Very high 50
21 Aug	37.4 °C	19 %	28 km/h	Very high 42
22 Aug	38.3 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Very high 47
23 Aug	37.4 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 51
24 Aug	36.6 °C	19 %	43 km/h	Extreme 51
25 Aug	35.4 °C	27 %	48 km/h	Extreme 54
26 Aug	35.5 °C	25 %	41 km/h	Very high 49
27 Aug	36.2 °C	22 %	39 km/h	Very high 47
28 Aug	35.3 °C	28 %	44 km/h	Very high 49
29 Aug	35.7 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Very high 47
30 Aug	37.0 °C	21 %	38 km/h	Very high 45
31 Aug	37.5 °C	21 %	36 km/h	Very high 44
1 Sept	38.0 °C	20 %	41 km/h	Very high 49
2 Sept after	36.5 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 51
3 Sept after	35.8 °C	23 %	44 km/h	Extreme 51
4 Sept after	35.1 °C	24 %	43 km/h	Extreme 51
5 Sept after	36.2 °C	23 %	40 km/h	Very high 49
6 Sept after	36.7 °C	24 %	40 km/h	Very high 50
7 Sept after	36.8 °C	25 %	36 km/h	Very high 48
8 Sept after	36.3 °C	24 %	26 km/h	Very high 42
9 Sept after	37.1 °C	21 %	35 km/h	Very high 46
10 Sept after	36.8 °C	17 %	39 km/h	Very high 49
11 Sept after	36.8 °C	21 %	42 km/h	Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 12 Aug 2016

After · 8 Sept 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 · 199Every 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

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Frequently asked questions

How long did the Ribeiro Gonçalves fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 19 August 2016 to 1 September 2016 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 August 2016 to 29 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,252 hectares (52.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ribeiro Gonçalves (5,192 ha, 1.3 %); Tasso Fragoso (97 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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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.

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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 August 2016 to 29 August 2016. 199 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