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Sambaíba fire, September 2018 Sambaíba

Out · last detection 21 Sept 2018, 16:13 UTC

The fire started on 16 September 2018 in Sambaíba, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,034 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 594th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 290 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2019Sambaíba · 2016Ribeiro Gonçalves · 2025Tasso Fragoso · 2017

Burnt area
3,034ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
16 Sept 2018 – 21 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Sept
2018
Heat detections
77
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
120MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Sept21 Sept
21 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

17 Sept 2018 · 2 MW · 1 18 Sept 2018 · 50 MW · 20 19 Sept 2018 · 246 MW · 43 21 Sept 2018 · 184 MW · 13
17 Sept 18 Sept 19 Sept 21 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
41km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.3 mm on 1 Oct.

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 34 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Sambaíba 5,568 inhabitants where it started
    3,056 ha reached on 17 Sept
    1.2 %

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)
17 Sept 38.3 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept 38.6 °C 23 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 38.0 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Sept 37.3 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
21 Sept 38.1 °C 22 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Sept after 39.2 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
23 Sept after 38.4 °C 21 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Sept after 37.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Sept after 36.9 °C 28 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Sept after 38.8 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
27 Sept after 39.3 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
28 Sept after 39.9 °C 20 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept after 38.7 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Sept after 36.7 °C 31 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
1 Oct after 37.0 °C 30 % 31 km/h 1.3 mm High 26

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Sept 2018
After · 28 Sept 2018

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 · 77Every 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 Sambaíba fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 September 2018 to 21 September 2018 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 September 2018 to 21 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,034 hectares (30.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sambaíba (3,056 ha, 1.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 ›

Satellite cross-check

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.

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 17 September 2018 to 21 September 2018. 77 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.