How long did the Sandolândia fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2024 to 10 September 2024 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2024 to 6 September 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,365 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Sandolândia (3,387 ha, 1.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 2024-08-21 → 2024-09-10

Sandolândia fire, August 2024 Sandolândia

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2024, 16:37 UTC

The fire started on 21 August 2024 in Sandolândia, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,365 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1045th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1243 with a page). Number 1120 in Brazil in 2024, of 1301.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Sandolândia · 2026 São Miguel do Araguaia · 2022 Formoso do Araguaia · 2026 Formoso do Araguaia · 2025

Burnt area: 3,365ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 21 Aug 2024 – 10 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 21 Aug; 2024
Heat detections: 206; in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 140MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Aug10 Sept

Play back 9 Sept 2024

How it evolved, day by day

21 Aug 25 Aug 30 Aug 2 Sept 4 Sept 5 Sept 8 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

13%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 2.1% of the area of London (34 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

Sandolândia 3,723 inhabitants where it started

3,387 ha reached on 21 Aug

1.0 %

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 2025

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
21 Aug	36.8 °C	23 %	34 km/h	Very high 46
22 Aug	37.3 °C	18 %	38 km/h	Extreme 50
23 Aug	36.4 °C	23 %	45 km/h	Extreme 55
24 Aug	36.7 °C	20 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
25 Aug	37.0 °C	21 %	28 km/h	Very high 45
26 Aug	35.5 °C	29 %	36 km/h	Very high 46
27 Aug	37.7 °C	22 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
28 Aug	36.3 °C	26 %	51 km/h	Extreme 57
29 Aug	34.2 °C	30 %	47 km/h	Extreme 52
30 Aug	35.2 °C	30 %	41 km/h	Very high 47
31 Aug	36.0 °C	22 %	36 km/h	Very high 45
1 Sept	37.0 °C	22 %	39 km/h	Very high 47
2 Sept	36.8 °C	19 %	41 km/h	Extreme 52
3 Sept	37.2 °C	18 %	33 km/h	Very high 47
4 Sept	38.7 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 55
5 Sept	38.2 °C	17 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
6 Sept	38.0 °C	14 %	38 km/h	Extreme 58
7 Sept	38.0 °C	16 %	43 km/h	Extreme 60
8 Sept	37.7 °C	17 %	47 km/h	Extreme 64
9 Sept	37.0 °C	19 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
10 Sept	36.9 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Extreme 59
11 Sept after	37.1 °C	20 %	42 km/h	Extreme 59
12 Sept after	37.4 °C	20 %	47 km/h	Extreme 62
13 Sept after	37.8 °C	19 %	47 km/h	Extreme 62
14 Sept after	37.8 °C	18 %	42 km/h	Extreme 59
15 Sept after	38.2 °C	19 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
16 Sept after	39.0 °C	15 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
17 Sept after	39.7 °C	16 %	24 km/h	Very high 48
18 Sept after	39.1 °C	19 %	45 km/h	Extreme 61
19 Sept after	38.0 °C	22 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Aug 2024

After · 17 Sept 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 6 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak58 µg/m³

Days over the guideline4 days

PM1084 µg/m³

Optical depth0.87

WHO 15

232425262728293031123456789

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 · 206Every 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 Sandolândia fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 August 2024 to 10 September 2024 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 August 2024 to 6 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,365 hectares (33.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Sandolândia (3,387 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 6 September 2024 → 10 September 2024.
25 October 2026 Start date: 25 August 2024 → 21 August 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 25 August 2024 to 6 September 2024. 206 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