Bragança fire, October 2017 Rebordainhos e Pombares, Quintela de Lampaças, Espadanedo, Edroso, Murçós e Soutelo Mourisco
The fire started on 8 October 2017 in Quintela de Lampaças, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 582 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 8 October 2017 at 02:00 and declared extinguished on 8 October 2017.
Number 85 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 582ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 8 Oct 2017 – 8 Oct 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- freguesias
- Started on
- 8 Oct
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 15
- in a single hotspot: 240 MW
- Danger at start
- 31
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 963MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
8 Oct 2017 · 963 MW · 15
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 38 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 15.2 mm on 17 Oct.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Rebordainhos e Pombares 148 inhabitants · 2.9 km from the centre244 ha reached on 8 Oct10 %
-
214 ha reached on 8 Oct11 %
-
Espadanedo, Edroso, Murçós e Soutelo Mourisco 386 inhabitants · 5.7 km from the centre125 ha1.9 %
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
- Scrub and transitional woodland36 %
- Agricultural areas34 %
- Other natural land23 %
- Broadleaved forest7.0 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 58 %
- ZEPA + LIC Montesinho / Nogueira PTCON0002 · PTZPE0003
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.20 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
According to ICNF, this fire started on 8 October 2017 and burned 480 ha (the satellite measured 582 ha).
- Bragança Quintela de Lampaças 8 October 2017 · 02:00 480 ha · extinguished on 8 October 2017 · cause: unknown
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 Oct | 25.1 °C | 13 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 9 Oct after | 23.8 °C | 15 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 10 Oct after | 23.8 °C | 16 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 11 Oct after | 23.0 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 12 Oct after | 24.3 °C | 20 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 13 Oct after | 23.3 °C | 26 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 14 Oct after | 24.5 °C | 27 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 15 Oct after | 27.1 °C | 20 % | 47 km/h | 0.2 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Oct after | 19.9 °C | 39 % | 43 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 28 |
| 17 Oct after | 15.3 °C | 50 % | 36 km/h | 15.2 mm | Very low 0 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 8 October 2017 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).
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 · 15Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,405 haVinhais Vale das Fontes28 August 2025 · 3 days · 18 km away
- 13,065 haValpaços ErvõesJuly 2026 · 6 days · 27 km away
- 5,163 haMirandela FrechasAugust 2025 · 3 days · 32 km away
- 2,042 haVinhais Soeira, Fresulfe e MofreitaAugust 2026 · 10 days · 33 km away
- 1,449 haHermisendeJanuary 2022 · 2 days · 37 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bragança fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 8 October 2017 and 8 October 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 8 October 2017 at 02:00 and declared extinguished on 8 October 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 582 hectares (5.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Rebordainhos e Pombares (244 ha, 10 %); Quintela de Lampaças (214 ha, 11 %); Espadanedo, Edroso, Murçós e Soutelo Mourisco (125 ha, 1.9 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Quintela de Lampaças and came within 1.7 km of its centre. That is the distance from the perimeter, or the nearest hotspot, to the point marking the centre; 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 13 % and gusts hit 22 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 31, 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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.
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
How we know this
- Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 15 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 480 official ha against 582 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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.
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.