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Boticas fire, 6 October 2017 Alturas do Barroso e Cerdedo, Dornelas, Vilar e Viveiro

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2017, 12:51 UTC

The fire started on 6 October 2017 in Alturas do Barroso e Cerdedo, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 803 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 8 October 2017 at 08:40 and declared extinguished on 9 October 2017.

Number 69 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.

Burnt area
803ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
4days
6 Oct 2017 – 9 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
6 Oct
2017
Heat detections
29
in a single hotspot: 72 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Energy released
464MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

10 Oct 2017
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Oct9 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

8910

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

The weather it burned in

25°high
39km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.9 mm on 16 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Alturas do Barroso e Cerdedo 389 inhabitants · 0.0 km from the town where it started
    526 ha reached on 8 Oct
    9.2 %
  2. Dornelas 2.9 km from the town
    238 ha reached on 8 Oct
    6.5 %
  3. Vilar e Viveiro 383 inhabitants · 4.9 km from the town
    35 ha
    1.1 %
  4. Covas do Barroso 191 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the town
    5 ha
    0.2 %

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 land72 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland20 %
  • Agricultural areas6.8 %
  • Coniferous forest0.5 %

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 702 ha (the satellite measured 803 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 Oct 24.2 °C 26 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
7 Oct 23.0 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
8 Oct 25.1 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
9 Oct 24.8 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
10 Oct after 24.3 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
11 Oct after 22.7 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Oct after 24.1 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
13 Oct after 23.4 °C 29 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Oct after 24.3 °C 29 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Oct after 25.7 °C 28 % 57 km/h 0.1 mm High 38
16 Oct after 19.4 °C 41 % 54 km/h 6.9 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Sept 2017
After · 16 Oct 2017

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 October 2017 the air beside the fire reached 43 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 21: 1.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak43 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM1056 µg/m³
4567891011121314
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 · 29Every 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 Boticas fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 6 October 2017 and 9 October 2017: 4 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 8 October 2017 at 08:40 and declared extinguished on 9 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 803 hectares (8.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Alturas do Barroso e Cerdedo (526 ha, 9.2 %); Dornelas (238 ha, 6.5 %); Vilar e Viveiro (35 ha, 1.1 %); Covas do Barroso (5 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.0 km of Alturas do Barroso e Cerdedo. 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 25.1 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, 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.