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Vila Propício fire, August 2021 Vila Propício, Mimoso de Goiás

Out · last detection 31 Aug 2021, 16:55 UTC

The fire started on 25 August 2021 in Vila Propício, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,567 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 142th largest in Goiás since 2016 (of 548 with a page). Number 221 in Brazil in 2021, of 814.

Compare with…
Burnt area
7,567ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
25 Aug 2021 – 31 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
25 Aug
2021
Heat detections
217
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
402MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Aug31 Aug
31 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

25 Aug 2021 · 18 MW · 6 26 Aug 2021 · 16 MW · 5 28 Aug 2021 · 678 MW · 38 29 Aug 2021 · 1,482 MW · 90 30 Aug 2021 · 190 MW · 61 31 Aug 2021 · 31 MW · 17
25 Aug 26 Aug 28 Aug 29 Aug 30 Aug 31 Aug

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

35°high
42km/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

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2016, 310 ha in 2017, 210 ha in 2018, 1,972 ha in 2019, 35 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,315 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.8% of the area of London (76 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. Vila Propício 5,815 inhabitants where it started
    7,592 ha reached on 25 Aug
    3.5 %
  2. Mimoso de Goiás 2,614 inhabitants
    14 ha
    0.0 %

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 area0.69 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.69 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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)
25 Aug 33.5 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
26 Aug 34.8 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
27 Aug 34.6 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
28 Aug 32.9 °C 23 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Aug 32.5 °C 27 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Aug 31.9 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Aug 30.9 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Sept after 30.9 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Sept after 31.4 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Sept after 32.8 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Sept after 34.0 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
5 Sept after 35.0 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Sept after 36.0 °C 19 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept after 36.7 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Sept after 35.3 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Sept after 36.2 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Sept after 36.1 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Aug 2021
After · 7 Sept 2021

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 · 217Every 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 Vila Propício fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 August 2021 and 31 August 2021: 7 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 7,567 hectares (75.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Vila Propício (7,592 ha, 3.5 %); Mimoso de Goiás (14 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.8 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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. 217 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.