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Baião fire, July 2025 Gestaçô, Santa Marinha do Zêzere

Out · last detection 29 Jul 2025, 14:15 UTC

The fire started on 29 July 2025 in Gestaçô, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 101 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 14th largest in Baião since 2016 (of 14 with a page). Number 84 in Portugal in 2025, of 85.

The power measured by the satellite is low (12.2 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
101ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
29 Jul 2025 – 30 Jul 2025
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
29 Jul
2025
Heat detections
9
in a single hotspot: 12 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Energy released
72MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Jul30 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

29

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

The weather it burned in

30°high
53km/h · peak gust
29%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 56 ha in 2019, 74 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 84 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Gestaçô 1,013 inhabitants · 1.4 km from the town where it started
    72 ha reached on 29 Jul
    5.0 %
  2. Santa Marinha do Zêzere 2,469 inhabitants · 1.7 km from the town
    30 ha reached on 29 Jul
    2.8 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland76 %
  • Agricultural areas24 %

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 136 ha (the satellite measured 101 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
29 Jul 30.2 °C 31 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Jul 30.4 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Jul after 30.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
1 Aug after 30.0 °C 34 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Aug after 31.6 °C 34 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
3 Aug after 33.7 °C 27 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Aug after 33.4 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Aug after 35.1 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
6 Aug after 30.6 °C 39 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
7 Aug after 31.0 °C 38 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
8 Aug after 30.5 °C 44 % 32 km/h 0.4 mm High 28
9 Aug after 32.4 °C 38 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Jul 2025
After · 6 Aug 2025

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 1 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 61 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak61 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1068 µg/m³
Optical depth0.73
272829303112
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 · 9Every 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 29 July 2025 and 30 July 2025: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 101 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gestaçô (72 ha, 5.0 %); Santa Marinha do Zêzere (30 ha, 2.8 %).
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 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 33, 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.