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Sento Sé fire, August 2018 Sento Sé

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2018, 16:18 UTC

The fire started on 27 August 2018 in Sento Sé, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,486 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 278th largest in Bahia since 2016 (of 466 with a page). Number 128 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…
Burnt area
4,486ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
27 Aug 2018 – 9 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
27 Aug
2018
Heat detections
262
in a single hotspot: 327 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
441MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Aug9 Sept
10 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2018 · 2 MW · 1 29 Aug 2018 · 506 MW · 8 30 Aug 2018 · 1,087 MW · 45 31 Aug 2018 · 1,345 MW · 40 1 Sept 2018 · 732 MW · 34 2 Sept 2018 · 474 MW · 36 3 Sept 2018 · 12 MW · 8 4 Sept 2018 · 412 MW · 27 5 Sept 2018 · 692 MW · 43 6 Sept 2018 · 381 MW · 10 7 Sept 2018 · 53 MW · 6 9 Sept 2018 · 15 MW · 2 10 Sept 2018 · 15 MW · 2
28 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 5 Sept 7 Sept 10 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

33°high
50km/h · peak gust
32%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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.8% of the area of London (45 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. Sento Sé 38,154 inhabitants where it started
    4,513 ha reached on 28 Aug
    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.

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)
27 Aug 30.6 °C 40 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Aug 29.5 °C 48 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Aug 30.2 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Aug 29.6 °C 38 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Aug 29.2 °C 45 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Sept 30.7 °C 38 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
2 Sept 32.0 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Sept 32.8 °C 38 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
4 Sept 33.1 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Sept 32.4 °C 43 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Sept 31.6 °C 46 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
7 Sept 31.8 °C 40 % 41 km/h 0.1 mm High 34
8 Sept 28.5 °C 50 % 50 km/h 0.5 mm High 33
9 Sept 32.4 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
10 Sept after 32.7 °C 36 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Sept after 32.1 °C 38 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
12 Sept after 33.2 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Sept after 32.0 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Sept after 31.6 °C 34 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Sept after 32.7 °C 37 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Sept after 33.9 °C 34 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Sept after 35.5 °C 30 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
18 Sept after 35.0 °C 26 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Sept after 34.6 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept after 33.6 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Aug 2018
After · 16 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 · 262Every 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 Sento Sé fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 August 2018 and 9 September 2018: 14 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 4,486 hectares (44.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Sento Sé (4,513 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.1 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very high.
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 262 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.

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.