How long did the Tamboril do Piauí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 September 2018 to 2 October 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2018 to 28 September 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,204 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Canto do Buriti (3,457 ha, 0.8 %); Tamboril do Piauí (772 ha, 0.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 2018-09-21 → 2018-10-02

Tamboril do Piauí fire, September 2018 Canto do Buriti, Tamboril do Piauí

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2018, 16:06 UTC

The fire started on 21 September 2018 in Tamboril do Piauí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,204 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 472th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 805 with a page). Number 146 in Brazil in 2018, of 291.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Tamboril do Piauí · 2021 Brejo do Piauí · 2020 Canto do Buriti · 2020 Canto do Buriti · 2022

Burnt area: 4,204ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 12days; 21 Sept 2018 – 2 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 21 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 206; in a single hotspot: 333 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 834MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Sept2 Oct

Play back 2 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

21 Sept 22 Sept 23 Sept 25 Sept 27 Sept 2 Oct

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

49km/h · peak gust

23%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 70 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.7% of the area of London (42 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

Canto do Buriti 19,365 inhabitants

3,457 ha reached on 21 Sept

0.8 %
Tamboril do Piauí 2,949 inhabitants where it started

772 ha reached on 21 Sept

0.5 %

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 area0.79 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.79 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (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)
21 Sept	36.8 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
22 Sept	37.3 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
23 Sept	37.6 °C	27 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
24 Sept	36.1 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
25 Sept	35.6 °C	31 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
26 Sept	36.5 °C	32 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
27 Sept	37.2 °C	28 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
28 Sept	37.9 °C	25 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
29 Sept	38.9 °C	25 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
30 Sept	35.9 °C	35 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
1 Oct	36.7 °C	30 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
2 Oct	37.2 °C	26 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
3 Oct after	37.9 °C	28 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Oct after	37.9 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
5 Oct after	36.8 °C	34 %	38 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 40
6 Oct after	36.6 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Oct after	36.8 °C	31 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Oct after	36.7 °C	28 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
9 Oct after	37.5 °C	21 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
10 Oct after	38.2 °C	22 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
11 Oct after	37.8 °C	27 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Oct after	37.4 °C	27 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Sept 2018

After · 9 Oct 2018

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 · 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 Tamboril do Piauí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 September 2018 to 2 October 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 21 September 2018 to 28 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,204 hectares (42.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Canto do Buriti (3,457 ha, 0.8 %); Tamboril do Piauí (772 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.9 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

25 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 September 2018 → 2 October 2018.

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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What really happened?

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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 21 September 2018 to 28 September 2018. 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 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.

Where it burned