Chandrexa de Queixa fire, 12 October 2017 Chandrexa de Queixa, San Xoán de Río, Castro Caldelas
The fire started on 12 October 2017 in Chandrexa de Queixa, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 735 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 30th largest in Ourense since 2016 (of 118 with a page). Number 37 in Spain in 2017, of 144.
The power measured by the satellite is low (21.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 735ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 12 Oct 2017 – 12 Oct 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Oct
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 3
- in a single hotspot: 22 MW
- Danger at start
- 22
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 45MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
12 Oct 2017 · 45 MW · 3
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 17 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 16.6 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).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
428 ha reached on 12 Oct2.5 %
-
San Xoán de Río 510 inhabitants · 4.0 km from the centre179 ha2.9 %
-
Castro Caldelas 1,244 inhabitants · 5.4 km from the centre129 ha1.5 %
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
- Other natural land75 %
- Agricultural areas13 %
- Broadleaved forest8.9 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland3.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Oct | 23.2 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 13 Oct after | 23.0 °C | 29 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Moderate 21 |
| 14 Oct after | 24.2 °C | 31 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Oct after | 25.8 °C | 24 % | 60 km/h | 0.7 mm | High 29 |
| 16 Oct after | 22.0 °C | 34 % | 52 km/h | 0.6 mm | Moderate 19 |
| 17 Oct after | 14.8 °C | 58 % | 50 km/h | 16.6 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 15 October 2017 the air beside the fire reached 36 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.4 times the WHO daily 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 · 3Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 30,754 haChandrexa de QueixaAugust 2025 · 20 days · 14 km away
- 7,090 haVilariño de ConsoJuly 2022 · 10 days · 18 km away
- 3,634 haLazaAugust 2022 · 7 days · 23 km away
- 37,831 haLarouco Vilamartín de ValdeorrasAugust 2025 · 15 days · 27 km away
- 1,987 haPantónSeptember 2025 · 4 days · 28 km away
- 13,989 haFolgoso do CourelJuly 2022 · 10 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chandrexa de Queixa fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 12 October 2017 and 12 October 2017: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 735 hectares (7.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Chandrexa de Queixa (428 ha, 2.5 %); San Xoán de Río (179 ha, 2.9 %); Castro Caldelas (129 ha, 1.5 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 4.0 km of the centre of San Xoán de Río, 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 23.2 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 22, class High.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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.
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. 3 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.