How long did the Tuntum fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2020 to 15 September 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2020 to 11 September 2020.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,916 hectares (49.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Tuntum (4,952 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 2020-08-28 → 2020-09-15

Tuntum fire, August 2020 Tuntum

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2020, 16:38 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2020 in Tuntum, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,916 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 235th largest in Maranhão since 2016 (of 607 with a page). Number 517 in Brazil in 2020, of 957.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mirador · 2025 Colinas · 2018 Tuntum · 2017

Burnt area: 4,916ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 28 Aug 2020 – 15 Sept 2020
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 28 Aug; 2020
Heat detections: 187; in a single hotspot: 78 MW
Danger at start: 41; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 111MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug15 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2020

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 31 Aug 1 Sept 3 Sept 6 Sept 9 Sept 13 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

46km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

27% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,348 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.1% of the area of London (49 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

Tuntum where it started

4,952 ha reached on 28 Aug

1.5 %

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 area0.58 ha

Residents≈ 30

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.58 hectares of built-up land and about 30 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)
28 Aug	37.2 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
29 Aug	36.6 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
30 Aug	36.7 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
31 Aug	37.3 °C	19 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
1 Sept	36.9 °C	19 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
2 Sept	35.7 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
3 Sept	36.2 °C	23 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
4 Sept	36.4 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
5 Sept	36.9 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
6 Sept	36.3 °C	24 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
7 Sept	35.9 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
8 Sept	36.7 °C	23 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
9 Sept	36.3 °C	25 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
10 Sept	36.9 °C	25 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
11 Sept	36.7 °C	24 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
12 Sept	37.3 °C	22 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
13 Sept	35.8 °C	24 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
14 Sept	35.9 °C	26 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
15 Sept	36.2 °C	23 %	52 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
16 Sept after	37.6 °C	24 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
17 Sept after	37.7 °C	26 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Sept after	38.0 °C	26 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
19 Sept after	35.1 °C	39 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
20 Sept after	35.8 °C	37 %	34 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
21 Sept after	35.7 °C	39 %	30 km/h	0.4 mm	High 34
22 Sept after	37.3 °C	30 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
23 Sept after	38.7 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
24 Sept after	38.4 °C	23 %	41 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 · 21 Aug 2020

After · 22 Sept 2020

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 · 187Every 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 Tuntum fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 August 2020 to 15 September 2020 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 August 2020 to 11 September 2020.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,916 hectares (49.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Tuntum (4,952 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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: 11 September 2020 → 15 September 2020.

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 28 August 2020 to 11 September 2020. 187 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