How long did the Santo Inácio do Piauí fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2016 and 25 August 2016: 16 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 10,981 hectares (109.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santo Inácio do Piauí (10,241 ha, 12 %); Colônia do Piauí (812 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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 · 2016-08-10 → 2016-08-25

Santo Inácio do Piauí fire, August 2016 Santo Inácio do Piauí, Colônia do Piauí

Out · last detection 25 Aug 2016, 16:06 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2016 in Santo Inácio do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,981 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 101th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 80 in Brazil in 2016, of 649.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Campinas do Piauí · 2020 Santo Inácio do Piauí · 2018 São Miguel do Fidalgo · 2024 São José do Peixe · 2016

Burnt area: 10,981ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 10 Aug 2016 – 25 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 10 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 461; in a single hotspot: 306 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 568MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug25 Aug

Play back 25 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Aug 14 Aug 17 Aug 20 Aug 22 Aug 23 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

40°high

60km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone 58 days 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 6.9% of the area of London (110 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

Santo Inácio do Piauí 3,646 inhabitants where it started

10,241 ha reached on 10 Aug

12 %
Colônia do Piauí 6,994 inhabitants

812 ha reached on 21 Aug

0.8 %

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 area0.54 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.54 hectares of built-up land and about 30 residents (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)
10 Aug	37.3 °C	22 %	38 km/h	Very high 47
11 Aug	37.5 °C	21 %	37 km/h	Very high 47
12 Aug	37.2 °C	23 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
13 Aug	35.7 °C	16 %	44 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Aug	35.7 °C	22 %	42 km/h	Extreme 53
15 Aug	37.0 °C	22 %	40 km/h	Extreme 51
16 Aug	37.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	Very high 50
17 Aug	39.1 °C	19 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
18 Aug	38.0 °C	21 %	41 km/h	Extreme 54
19 Aug	35.6 °C	23 %	42 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Aug	35.7 °C	30 %	48 km/h	Extreme 53
21 Aug	36.5 °C	28 %	40 km/h	Very high 47
22 Aug	40.2 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
23 Aug	36.5 °C	17 %	48 km/h	Extreme 62
24 Aug	35.7 °C	24 %	54 km/h	Extreme 59
25 Aug	35.2 °C	28 %	60 km/h	Extreme 60
26 Aug after	34.5 °C	29 %	54 km/h	Extreme 55
27 Aug after	36.7 °C	26 %	52 km/h	Extreme 57
28 Aug after	34.8 °C	26 %	50 km/h	Extreme 53
29 Aug after	35.2 °C	27 %	44 km/h	Extreme 52
30 Aug after	36.8 °C	22 %	47 km/h	Extreme 51
31 Aug after	36.4 °C	27 %	54 km/h	Extreme 56
1 Sept after	36.6 °C	25 %	46 km/h	Extreme 51
2 Sept after	35.5 °C	24 %	47 km/h	Extreme 51
3 Sept after	35.2 °C	23 %	53 km/h	Extreme 52
4 Sept after	34.0 °C	27 %	50 km/h	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Aug 2016

After · 1 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 · 461Every 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 Santo Inácio do Piauí fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 August 2016 and 25 August 2016: 16 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 10,981 hectares (109.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Santo Inácio do Piauí (10,241 ha, 12 %); Colônia do Piauí (812 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, 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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 461 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