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Santarém fire, 4 November 2017 Santarém

Out · last detection 7 Dec 2017, 17:55 UTC

The fire started on 4 November 2017 in Santarém, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 33 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,702 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 304th largest in Pará since 2016 (of 1096 with a page). Number 248 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…
Burnt area
7,702ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
33days
4 Nov 2017 – 6 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
4 Nov
2017
Heat detections
561
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start
1
Very low · FWI index
Average daily power
167MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Nov6 Dec
7 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

5 Nov 2017 · 4 MW · 3 6 Nov 2017 · 38 MW · 9 7 Nov 2017 · 9 MW · 5 10 Nov 2017 · 17 MW · 2 11 Nov 2017 · 1 MW · 1 12 Nov 2017 · 95 MW · 12 13 Nov 2017 · 1 MW · 1 14 Nov 2017 · 209 MW · 16 17 Nov 2017 · 109 MW · 12 18 Nov 2017 · 772 MW · 85 19 Nov 2017 · 1,299 MW · 59 20 Nov 2017 · 339 MW · 33 21 Nov 2017 · 19 MW · 19 22 Nov 2017 · 193 MW · 59 23 Nov 2017 · 252 MW · 24 24 Nov 2017 · 12 MW · 2 25 Nov 2017 · 286 MW · 16 26 Nov 2017 · 65 MW · 12 27 Nov 2017 · 49 MW · 26 28 Nov 2017 · 102 MW · 24 29 Nov 2017 · 300 MW · 43 30 Nov 2017 · 20 MW · 3 2 Dec 2017 · 44 MW · 24 3 Dec 2017 · 192 MW · 22 4 Dec 2017 · 176 MW · 18 5 Dec 2017 · 25 MW · 3 6 Dec 2017 · 16 MW · 5 7 Dec 2017 · 34 MW · 20
5 Nov 11 Nov 17 Nov 19 Nov 21 Nov 25 Nov 29 Nov 4 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
42km/h · peak gust
43%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.8 mm on 8 Dec.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (77 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. Santarém 331,942 inhabitants where it started
    7,755 ha reached on 1 Nov
    0.4 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
1 Nov 30.4 °C 64 % 27 km/h 0.8 mm Very low 1
2 Nov 31.2 °C 56 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
3 Nov 32.0 °C 55 % 31 km/h 1.0 mm Low 5
4 Nov 31.9 °C 58 % 34 km/h 0.9 mm Low 6
5 Nov 32.5 °C 54 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
6 Nov 32.7 °C 48 % 33 km/h 0.3 mm Low 10
7 Nov 31.0 °C 62 % 27 km/h 3.3 mm Very low 1
8 Nov 31.3 °C 58 % 27 km/h 0.6 mm Very low 4
9 Nov 31.9 °C 56 % 28 km/h 0.1 mm Low 8
10 Nov 32.6 °C 51 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Low 10
11 Nov 32.0 °C 55 % 20 km/h 1.0 mm Low 6
12 Nov 31.9 °C 60 % 24 km/h 0.2 mm Low 8
13 Nov 31.5 °C 53 % 26 km/h 0.5 mm Low 9
14 Nov 32.1 °C 52 % 19 km/h 0.1 mm Low 9
15 Nov 30.9 °C 56 % 29 km/h 0.7 mm Low 8
16 Nov 30.6 °C 63 % 31 km/h 2.3 mm Very low 3
17 Nov 31.7 °C 56 % 35 km/h 0.3 mm Low 8
18 Nov 32.1 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
19 Nov 32.7 °C 46 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
20 Nov 31.0 °C 59 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 14
21 Nov 32.2 °C 43 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
22 Nov 32.2 °C 53 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
23 Nov 30.8 °C 60 % 30 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 14
24 Nov 31.6 °C 59 % 35 km/h 1.3 mm Low 10
25 Nov 31.6 °C 55 % 42 km/h 1.2 mm Low 9
26 Nov 31.7 °C 52 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
27 Nov 31.7 °C 54 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
28 Nov 32.5 °C 55 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
29 Nov 31.9 °C 55 % 32 km/h 2.3 mm Low 5
30 Nov 31.6 °C 58 % 27 km/h 1.4 mm Low 6
1 Dec 32.2 °C 53 % 32 km/h 1.9 mm Low 8
2 Dec 32.2 °C 54 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
3 Dec 32.9 °C 49 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
4 Dec 32.3 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
5 Dec 32.0 °C 52 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
6 Dec 32.1 °C 54 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
7 Dec after 32.4 °C 50 % 27 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 15
8 Dec after 30.4 °C 60 % 27 km/h 4.8 mm Very low 2

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Oct 2017
After · 13 Dec 2017

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 · 561Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Santarém fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 November 2017 and 6 December 2017: 33 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,702 hectares (77.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Santarém (7,755 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.9 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 18, class Moderate.
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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 561 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.