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Xambioá fire, September 2017 Xambioá, São Geraldo do Araguaia

Out · last detection 22 Sept 2017, 16:38 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2017 in Xambioá, Brazil, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,794 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 52th largest in Tocantins since 2016 (of 1242 with a page). Number 60 in Brazil in 2017, of 994.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Xambioá · 2024São Geraldo do Araguaia · 2022Araguanã · 2024São Geraldo do Araguaia · 2017

Burnt area
21,794ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
9 Sept 2017 – 22 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
9 Sept
2017
Heat detections
898
in a single hotspot: 549 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept22 Sept
22 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2017 · 44 MW · 3 10 Sept 2017 · 1,549 MW · 21 11 Sept 2017 · 2,921 MW · 73 12 Sept 2017 · 2,632 MW · 74 13 Sept 2017 · 1,184 MW · 108 14 Sept 2017 · 1,933 MW · 117 15 Sept 2017 · 1,898 MW · 98 16 Sept 2017 · 1,680 MW · 148 17 Sept 2017 · 2,375 MW · 139 18 Sept 2017 · 928 MW · 47 19 Sept 2017 · 125 MW · 24 20 Sept 2017 · 15 MW · 7 21 Sept 2017 · 109 MW · 18 22 Sept 2017 · 49 MW · 21
9 Sept 11 Sept 13 Sept 15 Sept 17 Sept 19 Sept 21 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

35°high
48km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 25 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (218 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. Xambioá 10,517 inhabitants where it started
    21,932 ha reached on 9 Sept
    18 %
  2. São Geraldo do Araguaia 24,255 inhabitants
    0 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 2015
Built-up area11 ha
Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 11 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
9 Sept 34.3 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Sept 35.1 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Sept 34.5 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Sept 34.1 °C 27 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Sept 34.0 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Sept 34.4 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Sept 34.9 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Sept 34.9 °C 24 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Sept 34.5 °C 26 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Sept 34.9 °C 25 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Sept 34.7 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Sept 34.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Sept 35.2 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
22 Sept 34.7 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Sept after 34.4 °C 29 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Sept after 34.4 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Sept after 31.9 °C 41 % 30 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 14

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2017
After · 29 Sept 2017

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 · 898Every 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 Xambioá fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2017 and 22 September 2017: 14 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 21,794 hectares (217.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Xambioá (21,932 ha, 18 %); São Geraldo do Araguaia (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.2 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 48 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. 898 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 2015, 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.