Encinedo fire, January 2019 Encinedo, Porto
The fire started on 7 January 2019 in Encinedo, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 743 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 24th largest in León since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 15 in Spain in 2019, of 102.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 743ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 5days
- 7 Jan 2019 – 11 Jan 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 7 Jan
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 68
- in a single hotspot: 59 MW
- Danger at start
- 2
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 128MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
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 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 13.5 mm on 19 Jan.
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
-
418 ha reached on 7 Jan2.1 %
-
Porto 147 inhabitants · 13.7 km from the centre326 ha reached on 9 Jan1.6 %
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 land96 %
- Broadleaved forest2.0 %
- Artificial surfaces1.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 93 %
- ZEPA + LIC Lago de Sanabria y alrededores ES4190105 · ES4190009
- ZEPA + LIC Sierra de la Cabrera ES4190110 · ES4130024
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Several official records match this area
According to EGIF (MITECO), 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 573 ha (the satellite measured 743 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
EGIF (MITECO) records each fire that started at a different time or place separately; the satellite sees a single burned area, so this page groups them together. The numbers on the map show where each one started.
- 1 Encinedo 6 January 2019 · 09:30 540 ha · extinguished on 11 January 2019 · cause: arson
- 2 Encinedo 7 January 2019 · 11:09 33 ha · extinguished on 7 January 2019 · cause: arson
Total according to EGIF (MITECO): 573 ha, 77 % of the 743 ha in the satellite perimeter.
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Jan | 5.9 °C | 26 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 8 Jan | 5.2 °C | 46 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 9 Jan | 3.3 °C | 66 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 10 Jan | 1.4 °C | 49 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 11 Jan | 1.2 °C | 51 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 12 Jan after | 1.3 °C | 56 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 13 Jan after | 3.1 °C | 50 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 14 Jan after | 4.7 °C | 55 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 15 Jan after | 3.8 °C | 53 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 16 Jan after | -1.6 °C | 83 % | 24 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 17 Jan after | -1.1 °C | 59 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 18 Jan after | -3.2 °C | 79 % | 27 km/h | 0.8 mm | Very low 0 |
| 19 Jan after | -2.5 °C | 97 % | 53 km/h | 13.5 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.
Detections table · 68Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,953 haPorto de Sanabria PortoAugust 2025 · 17 days · 2 km away
- 10,927 haEncinedoAugust 2017 · 6 days · 15 km away
- 12,735 haCarballeda de ValdeorrasJuly 2022 · 8 days · 23 km away
- 4,416 haPuente de Domingo FlórezAugust 2025 · 9 days · 24 km away
- 26,241 haLlamas de Cabrera PonferradaAugust 2025 · 14 days · 28 km away
- 37,831 haLarouco Vilamartín de ValdeorrasAugust 2025 · 15 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Encinedo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 January 2019 to 11 January 2019 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 January 2019 to 10 January 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 743 hectares (7.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Encinedo (418 ha, 2.1 %); Porto (326 ha, 1.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Encinedo and came within 11.4 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 5.9 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 27 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 2, class Very low.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 10 January 2019 → 11 January 2019.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 January 2019 to 10 January 2019. 68 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 573 official ha against 743 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
- 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.
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.