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Castro Marim fire, August 2021 União das Freguesias de Conceição e Cabanas de Tavira, Vila Nova de Cacela, Azinhal

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2021, 03:28 UTC

The fire started on 16 August 2021 in Odeleite, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 7,414 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 7 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 August 2021 at 01:05 and declared extinguished on 17 August 2021.

The largest in Portugal in 2021, of 30.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
7,414ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
2days
16 Aug 2021 – 17 Aug 2021
Municipalities hit
7
freguesias
Started on
16 Aug
2021
Heat detections
130
in a single hotspot: 71 MW
Danger at start
78
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
888MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Aug17 Aug
17 Aug 2021

How it evolved, day by day

16 Aug 2021 · 764 MW · 31 17 Aug 2021 · 1,012 MW · 99
16 Aug 17 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
54km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.1 mm on 24 Aug.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (74 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. União das Freguesias de Conceição e Cabanas de Tavira 1,438 inhabitants · 3.3 km from the centre
    3,234 ha reached on 17 Aug
    46 %
  2. Vila Nova de Cacela 3,874 inhabitants · 2.4 km from the centre
    2,135 ha reached on 17 Aug
    46 %
  3. Azinhal 479 inhabitants · 7.6 km from the centre
    922 ha reached on 16 Aug
    13 %
  4. Odeleite 576 inhabitants · 9.1 km from the centre where it started
    847 ha reached on 16 Aug
    6.0 %
  5. Castro Marim 3,278 inhabitants · 8.2 km from the centre
    188 ha reached on 17 Aug
    2.4 %
  6. Altura 479 inhabitants · 3.4 km from the centre
    69 ha
    6.2 %
  7. Tavira (Santa Maria e Santiago) 15,434 inhabitants · 7.2 km from the centre
    32 ha reached on 17 Aug
    0.2 %

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

  • Agricultural areas49 %
  • Sclerophyllous scrub38 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland8.8 %
  • Broadleaved forest1.8 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.4 %
  • Coniferous forest1.0 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area29 ha
Residents≈ 650

Inside the perimeter there were about 29 hectares of built-up land and about 650 residents (GHSL 2020, 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 16 August 2021 and burned 6,629 ha (the satellite measured 7,414 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.

Checked against the press

Checked on 30 September 2026

We checked this page against 2 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:

Also known as
Fogo de Castro Marim · Incêndio de Castro Marim / Tavira / Vila Real de Santo António
Declared under control (not yet extinguished): 17 August 2021

Sources

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)
16 Aug 40.2 °C 6 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
17 Aug 35.5 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
18 Aug after 29.0 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Aug after 29.9 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Aug after 30.2 °C 26 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Aug after 35.1 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Aug after 34.6 °C 26 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Aug after 31.4 °C 38 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Aug after 28.4 °C 59 % 36 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 16

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Aug 2021
After · 24 Aug 2021

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 14 August 2021 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak20 µg/m³
Days over the guideline0 days
PM1062 µg/m³
14151617181920
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 · 130Every 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 Castro Marim fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 August 2021 and 17 August 2021: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 16 August 2021 at 01:05 and declared extinguished on 17 August 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 7,414 hectares (74.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 7 municipalities: União das Freguesias de Conceição e Cabanas de Tavira (3,234 ha, 46 %); Vila Nova de Cacela (2,135 ha, 46 %); Azinhal (922 ha, 13 %); Odeleite (847 ha, 6.0 %); Castro Marim (188 ha, 2.4 %); Altura (69 ha, 6.2 %); Tavira (Santa Maria e Santiago) (32 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire came within 2.4 km of the centre of Vila Nova de Cacela, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 40.2 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 78, class Very extreme.
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 ›

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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. 130 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 6,629 official ha against 7,414 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • Checked against news and agencies: 2 confirmed sources.
  • 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.