Allande fire, 29 March 2023 Villayón, Allande, Tineo
The fire started on 29 March 2023 in Allande, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,178 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 March 2023 at 17:47 and declared extinguished on 12 April 2023.
It is the 7th largest in Asturias since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 9 in Spain in 2023, of 124.
The power measured by the satellite is low (7.7 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: Allande · 2023Tineo · 2023Tineo · 2023Ibias · 2017
- Burnt area
- 1,178ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 3days
- 29 Mar 2023 – 31 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 17
- in a single hotspot: 8 MW
- Danger at start
- 8
- Low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 24MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.0 mm on 1 Apr.
This area had burned before
1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2020, 6 ha in 2021, 2 ha in 2022.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Villayón 1,054 inhabitants · 4.7 km from the centre884 ha reached on 30 Mar6.7 %
-
293 ha reached on 29 Mar0.8 %
-
Tineo 8,679 inhabitants · 17.6 km from the centre2 ha0.0 %
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
- Other natural land80 %
- Broadleaved forest15 %
- Agricultural areas3.0 %
- Coniferous forest2.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.23 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Official record
According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 29 March 2023 and burned 1,180 ha (the satellite measured 1,178 ha).
- Allande A Veiga, Pico Tel 29 March 2023 · 17:47 1,180 ha · extinguished on 12 April 2023 · cause: arson
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- incendio de Allande · incendio de Bustantigo · incendio de Bustelfollado (Villayón)
- Declared extinguished: 9 April 2023
Sources
- El INFOPA regresa a fase de alerta — 112 Asturias (Principado, fuente oficial), 12 April 2023 · official source
- Ingresa en prisión un ganadero de Allande por provocar el incendio que arrasó 1.200 hectáreas de monte — eldiario.es Asturias, 5 May 2023
- Prisión para un ganadero de Allande por provocar el incendio que acabó con 1.200 hectáreas en Asturias — Público, 5 May 2023
- Primer ingreso en prisión por la oleada de incendios de marzo — RTPA (radiotelevisión pública asturiana), 5 May 2023
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Mar | 21.9 °C | 32 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 30 Mar | 18.1 °C | 45 % | 83 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 11 |
| 31 Mar | 15.3 °C | 53 % | 76 km/h | 0.1 mm | Low 9 |
| 1 Apr after | 11.6 °C | 67 % | 55 km/h | 3.0 mm | Very low 1 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 31 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 58 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 17Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Allande fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 March 2023 and 31 March 2023: 3 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 March 2023 at 17:47 and declared extinguished on 12 April 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,178 hectares (11.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Villayón (884 ha, 6.7 %); Allande (293 ha, 0.8 %); Tineo (2 ha, 0.0 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 4.7 km of the centre of Villayón, the closest of the areas it touched. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; it does not mean it entered the houses.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 21.9 °C, humidity dropped to 32 % and gusts hit 83 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 11, class Moderate.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 17 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 1,180 official ha against 1,178 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- 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.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.