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Arcos de Valdevez fire, 8 August 2016 União das Freguesias de Eiras e Mei, Sabadim, Vascões

Out · last detection 10 Aug 2016, 12:39 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2016 in União das Freguesias de Eiras e Mei, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 785 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 6 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Arcos de Valdevez since 2016 (of 29 with a page). Number 42 in Portugal in 2016, of 180.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Monção · 2017Arcos de Valdevez · 2016Cabração e Moreira do Lima · 2016Ponte da Barca · 2025

Burnt area
785ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
8 Aug 2016 – 10 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
6
freguesias
Started on
8 Aug
2016
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 53 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
308MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug10 Aug
10 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 2016 · 237 MW · 6 9 Aug 2016 · 681 MW · 51 10 Aug 2016 · 6 MW · 1
8 Aug 9 Aug 10 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

33°high
59km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.4 mm on 17 Aug.

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 0.5% of the area of London (7.8 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. União das Freguesias de Eiras e Mei 322 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    224 ha reached on 8 Aug
    37 %
  2. Sabadim 410 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the centre
    201 ha reached on 9 Aug
    24 %
  3. Vascões 218 inhabitants · 12.6 km from the centre
    160 ha reached on 9 Aug
    26 %
  4. Parada fire reached the centre
    143 ha reached on 9 Aug
    24 %
  5. Senharei 164 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the centre
    45 ha reached on 9 Aug
    6.0 %
  6. Padroso 197 inhabitants · 1.1 km from the centre
    13 ha reached on 8 Aug
    1.6 %

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 land41 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland36 %
  • Agricultural areas15 %
  • Mixed forest5.0 %
  • Broadleaved forest2.4 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 14 %

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 area2.7 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.7 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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

Several official records match this area

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 619 ha (the satellite measured 785 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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 32 ha 2 588 ha
6 Aug10 Aug
arson rekindling
  1. 1 Arcos de Valdevez Eiras 6 August 2016 · 16:32 32 ha · extinguished on 6 August 2016 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Arcos de Valdevez Mei 8 August 2016 · 14:13 588 ha · extinguished on 10 August 2016 · cause: rekindling

Total according to ICNF: 619 ha, 79 % of the 785 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)
8 Aug 33.2 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Aug 27.3 °C 39 % 59 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
10 Aug 27.7 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
11 Aug after 28.4 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Aug after 29.2 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Aug after 27.1 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Aug after 26.3 °C 42 % 22 km/h 0.2 mm High 25
15 Aug after 25.1 °C 51 % 29 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 17
16 Aug after 21.3 °C 50 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
17 Aug after 20.1 °C 68 % 34 km/h 1.4 mm Low 8

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Aug 2016
After · 17 Aug 2016

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 11 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 65 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 38: 2.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak65 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM10112 µg/m³
678910111213
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 · 58Every 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 Arcos de Valdevez fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2016 and 10 August 2016: 3 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 785 hectares (7.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 6 municipalities: União das Freguesias de Eiras e Mei (224 ha, 37 %); Sabadim (201 ha, 24 %); Vascões (160 ha, 26 %); Parada (143 ha, 24 %); Senharei (45 ha, 6.0 %); Padroso (13 ha, 1.6 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in União das Freguesias de Eiras e Mei and reached its centre: 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 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, 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 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 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 58 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 619 official ha against 785 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • 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.