Skip to content
worldfires
PT · Portugal · →

Baião fire, September 2019 Gestaçô, Teixeira e Teixeiró, Loivos Do Monte

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2019, 13:22 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2019 in Gestaçô, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 808 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 5 September 2019 at 23:36 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2019.

It is the 3th largest in Baião since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 3 in Portugal in 2019, of 52.

Burnt area
808ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
6 Sept 2019 – 7 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
5
freguesias
Started on
6 Sept
2019
Heat detections
57
in a single hotspot: 101 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.4GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

7 Sept 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept7 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

67

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

The weather it burned in

23°high
76km/h · peak gust
22%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.9 mm on 16 Sept.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 133 ha in 2016, 54 ha in 2017.

What happened to each town

  1. Gestaçô 1,013 inhabitants · 0.4 km from the town
    342 ha reached on 6 Sept
    24 %
  2. Teixeira e Teixeiró 723 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the town where it started
    202 ha reached on 6 Sept
    7.6 %
  3. Loivos Do Monte
    124 ha reached on 7 Sept
    14 %
  4. Viariz 396 inhabitants · 0.5 km from the town
    89 ha reached on 6 Sept
    15 %
  5. Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei 827 inhabitants · 5.3 km from the town
    52 ha reached on 6 Sept
    2.2 %

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 land45 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland24 %
  • Mixed forest12 %
  • Broadleaved forest9.9 %
  • Agricultural areas8.8 %

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

Official record

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 918 ha (the satellite measured 808 ha).

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)
6 Sept 22.6 °C 23 % 76 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Sept 23.3 °C 22 % 75 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Sept after 24.4 °C 25 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
9 Sept after 19.8 °C 46 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
10 Sept after 17.9 °C 35 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
11 Sept after 23.6 °C 26 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
12 Sept after 25.7 °C 28 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
13 Sept after 28.1 °C 25 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
14 Sept after 25.2 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
15 Sept after 23.9 °C 42 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
16 Sept after 20.0 °C 63 % 34 km/h 4.9 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 Aug 2019
After · 14 Sept 2019

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 4 September 2019 the air beside the fire reached 14 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak14 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1022 µg/m³
45678910
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 · 57Every 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 6 September 2019 and 7 September 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 5 September 2019 at 23:36 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 808 hectares (8.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 5 municipalities: Gestaçô (342 ha, 24 %); Teixeira e Teixeiró (202 ha, 7.6 %); Loivos Do Monte (124 ha, 14 %); Viariz (89 ha, 15 %); Bustelo, Carneiro e Carvalho de Rei (52 ha, 2.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.4 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 23.3 °C, humidity dropped to 22 % and gusts hit 76 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 30, 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

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.

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.