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Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea fire, October 2017 Gondar, Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea, Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei

Out · last detection 8 Oct 2017, 02:06 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2017 in Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 311 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 9 October 2017 at 10:32 and declared extinguished on 9 October 2017.

Number 114 in Portugal in 2017, of 211.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
311ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
5days
7 Oct 2017 – 11 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
7 Oct
2017
Heat detections
13
in a single hotspot: 68 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
132MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct11 Oct
8 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 2017 · 252 MW · 9 8 Oct 2017 · 11 MW · 4
7 Oct 8 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
42km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 22.3 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Gondar 1,536 inhabitants · 1.0 km from the centre
    131 ha reached on 7 Oct
    14 %
  2. Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea 1,447 inhabitants · 3.5 km from the centre where it started
    126 ha reached on 7 Oct
    4.1 %
  3. Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei 827 inhabitants · fire reached the centre
    54 ha reached on 7 Oct
    2.3 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official 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.

What burned

  • Scrub and transitional woodland63 %
  • Coniferous forest16 %
  • Agricultural areas11 %
  • Artificial surfaces8.4 %
  • Mixed forest1.0 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 98 %

Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area0.95 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.95 hectares of built-up land and about 40 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

Official record

Complex of 3 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 365 ha (the satellite measured 311 ha).

ICNF records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.

When each one burned

1 50 ha 2 14 ha 3 301 ha
7 Oct10 Oct
arson cause unknown or not published rekindling
  1. 1 Amarante Várzea 7 October 2017 · 04:05 50 ha · extinguished on 8 October 2017 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Amarante Lufrei 7 October 2017 · 09:01 14 ha · extinguished on 7 October 2017 · cause: unknown
  3. 3 Amarante Bustelo 9 October 2017 · 10:32 301 ha · extinguished on 9 October 2017 · cause: rekindling

Total according to ICNF: 365 ha, 117 % of the 311 ha in the satellite perimeter.

ICNF (Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas). This is the agency’s operational record: its figures may be revised when the year’s statistics are closed.

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 Oct 27.2 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
8 Oct 28.2 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
9 Oct 26.2 °C 24 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Oct 26.4 °C 22 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
11 Oct 25.0 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
12 Oct after 27.9 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
13 Oct after 24.9 °C 40 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
14 Oct after 28.5 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Oct after 31.4 °C 22 % 56 km/h 0.4 mm High 38
16 Oct after 22.9 °C 43 % 37 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
17 Oct after 18.8 °C 48 % 44 km/h 22.3 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Sept 2017
After · 18 Oct 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 · 13Every 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 Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 October 2017 to 11 October 2017 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 October 2017 to 8 October 2017. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 9 October 2017 at 10:32 and declared extinguished on 9 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 311 hectares (3.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Gondar (131 ha, 14 %); Aboadela, Sanche e Várzea (126 ha, 4.1 %); Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei (54 ha, 2.3 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire reached the centre of Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class High.
Where does this data come from?
From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Portugal (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: 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Matched to the official record from ICNF.
  2. Last day with fire: 8 October 2017 → 11 October 2017.

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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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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 October 2017 to 8 October 2017. 13 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 365 official ha against 311 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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 and land cover come from the Copernicus European Forest Fire Information System (EFFIS), measured on MODIS and Sentinel-2 imagery and published under CC BY 4.0. 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 ADM3 (CC0 1.0 Universal (CC0 1.0) Public Domain Dedication). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ slightly from each country’s official figure.