How long did the Uruçuí fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2025 to 13 September 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2025 to 12 September 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,082 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Uruçuí (1,694 ha, 0.2 %); Baixa Grande do Ribeiro (1,407 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2025-09-07 → 2025-09-13

Uruçuí fire, 7 September 2025 Uruçuí, Baixa Grande do Ribeiro

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2025, 16:21 UTC

The fire started on 7 September 2025 in Uruçuí, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,082 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 767th largest in Piaui since 2016 (of 804 with a page). Number 693 in Brazil in 2025, of 714.

The power measured by the satellite is low (16.6 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Uruçuí · 2023 Baixa Grande do Ribeiro · 2019 Uruçuí · 2017 Baixa Grande do Ribeiro · 2024

Burnt area: 3,082ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 7days; 7 Sept 2025 – 13 Sept 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; municipalities
Started on: 7 Sept; 2025
Heat detections: 50; in a single hotspot: 17 MW
Danger at start: 52; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 50MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Sept13 Sept

Play back 13 Sept 2025

How it evolved, day by day

7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 11 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

39°high

45km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,176 ha in 2017, 1,444 ha in 2019, 895 ha in 2021, 2,467 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,798 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (31 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

Uruçuí 25,203 inhabitants where it started

1,694 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.2 %
Baixa Grande do Ribeiro 13,272 inhabitants

1,407 ha reached on 7 Sept

0.2 %

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 2025

Built-up area0.63 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.63 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
7 Sept	37.6 °C	17 %	40 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Sept	36.5 °C	20 %	45 km/h	Extreme 56
9 Sept	36.8 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 56
10 Sept	38.5 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
11 Sept	39.2 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
12 Sept	37.8 °C	17 %	36 km/h	Extreme 54
13 Sept	36.6 °C	18 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
14 Sept after	37.2 °C	18 %	39 km/h	Extreme 55
15 Sept after	38.0 °C	17 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
16 Sept after	37.8 °C	20 %	45 km/h	Extreme 60
17 Sept after	38.3 °C	19 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
18 Sept after	38.1 °C	20 %	41 km/h	Extreme 56
19 Sept after	37.5 °C	23 %	38 km/h	Extreme 52
20 Sept after	35.9 °C	22 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
21 Sept after	35.9 °C	25 %	40 km/h	Extreme 50
22 Sept after	37.0 °C	23 %	38 km/h	Very high 49
23 Sept after	37.7 °C	26 %	36 km/h	Very high 48
24 Sept after	36.1 °C	33 %	46 km/h	Very high 48
25 Sept after	36.8 °C	23 %	48 km/h	Extreme 51
26 Sept after	36.3 °C	24 %	43 km/h	Very high 48
27 Sept after	36.2 °C	20 %	47 km/h	Extreme 53
28 Sept after	36.3 °C	21 %	46 km/h	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Aug 2025

After · 20 Sept 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 September 2025 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1014 µg/m³

Optical depth0.35

56789101112131415

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 50Every 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 Uruçuí fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 September 2025 to 13 September 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 September 2025 to 12 September 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,082 hectares (30.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Uruçuí (1,694 ha, 0.2 %); Baixa Grande do Ribeiro (1,407 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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

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 7 September 2025 to 12 September 2025. 50 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 2025, 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