Skip to content
worldfires
en
PT · Portugal · →

Baião fire, 10 August 2016 Gestaçô

Out · last detection 11 Aug 2016, 02:37 UTC

The fire started on 10 August 2016 in Gestaçô, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 153 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 13th largest in Baião since 2016 (of 16 with a page). Number 138 in Portugal in 2016, of 179.

Compare with…

Suggestions: União das Freguesias de Campelo e Ovil e Loivos do Monte · 2024Castro Daire · 2024Arouca · 2025Trancoso · 2025

Burnt area
153ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
10 Aug 2016 – 11 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit
1
freguesias
Started on
10 Aug
2016
Heat detections
11
in a single hotspot: 47 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
128MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Aug11 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 2016 · 128 MW · 11

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

The weather it burned in

27°high
62km/h · peak gust
26%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 17 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Gestaçô 1,013 inhabitants · 1.4 km from the town where it started
    153 ha reached on 11 Aug
    11 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the official perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

What burned

  • Other natural land79 %
  • Agricultural areas17 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland4.0 %

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

Official record

Several official records match this area

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 207 ha (the satellite measured 153 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 57 ha 2 150 ha
6 Aug11 Aug
rekindling cause unknown or not published
  1. 1 Baião Gestaçô 6 August 2016 · 05:50 57 ha · extinguished on 6 August 2016 · cause: rekindling
  2. 2 Baião Gestaçô 10 August 2016 · 23:49 150 ha · extinguished on 11 August 2016 · cause: unknown

Total according to ICNF: 207 ha, 135 % of the 153 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)
10 Aug 26.2 °C 26 % 62 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Aug 26.8 °C 27 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Aug after 28.8 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
13 Aug after 28.4 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
14 Aug after 27.9 °C 35 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
15 Aug after 25.8 °C 46 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Aug after 22.9 °C 48 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
17 Aug after 22.0 °C 59 % 36 km/h 1.2 mm Low 11

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 3 Aug 2016
After · 18 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 13 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 56 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak56 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1060 µg/m³
891011121314
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 · 11Every 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 Baião fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 10 August 2016 and 11 August 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 153 hectares (1.5 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Gestaçô (153 ha, 11 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 1.4 km of Gestaçô. That is the distance to the perimeter or nearest hotspot; it does not mean it entered the houses.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.8 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, class Very 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

Satellite cross-check

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. 11 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 207 official ha against 153 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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.