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Tocantinópolis fire, September 2019 Tocantinópolis

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2019, 16:57 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2019 in Tocantinópolis, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,403 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 1028th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 806 in Brazil in 2019, of 974.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
3,403ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
7 Sept 2019 – 11 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
7 Sept
2019
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
174MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept11 Sept
11 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 2019 · 66 MW · 10 8 Sept 2019 · 552 MW · 38 9 Sept 2019 · 193 MW · 21 10 Sept 2019 · 33 MW · 9 11 Sept 2019 · 25 MW · 3
7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 11 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

37°high
40km/h · peak gust
28%lowest humidity

It had gone 0 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

41% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,385 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
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

  1. Tocantinópolis 22,615 inhabitants where it started
    3,425 ha reached on 7 Sept
    3.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
7 Sept 35.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 36.4 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
9 Sept 37.1 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Sept 36.7 °C 32 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Sept 36.6 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
12 Sept after 36.5 °C 39 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Sept after 36.0 °C 40 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
14 Sept after 35.1 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
15 Sept after 34.9 °C 42 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
16 Sept after 36.0 °C 39 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
17 Sept after 36.3 °C 36 % 36 km/h 0.2 mm High 32
18 Sept after 35.9 °C 41 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Sept after 37.3 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
20 Sept after 36.8 °C 39 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Sept after 36.2 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 31 Aug 2019
After · 18 Sept 2019

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 · 81Every 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

Other fires nearby

All fires in Brazil ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tocantinópolis fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 September 2019 and 11 September 2019: 5 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 3,403 hectares (34.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Tocantinópolis (3,425 ha, 3.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 28 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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. 81 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.