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Fafe fire, 17 September 2024 Golães, Passos, Arões (São Romão)

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2024, 02:56 UTC

The fire started on 17 September 2024 in Golães, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 199 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 16 September 2024 at 22:10 and declared extinguished on 17 September 2024.

It is the 11th largest in Fafe since 2016 (of 20 with a page). Number 54 in Portugal in 2024, of 69.

Burnt area
199ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
17 Sept 2024 – 17 Sept 2024
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
17 Sept
2024
Heat detections
24
in a single hotspot: 36 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
237MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Sept17 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

17

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

The weather it burned in

26°high
54km/h · peak gust
23%lowest humidity

It had gone 9 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 4.7 mm on 20 Sept.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 37 ha in 2016, 4 ha in 2022, 5 ha in 2023.

What happened to each town

  1. Golães 2,025 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the town where it started
    83 ha reached on 17 Sept
    17 %
  2. Passos 0.4 km from the town
    50 ha reached on 17 Sept
    13 %
  3. Arões (São Romão) 3,293 inhabitants · 0.9 km from the town
    47 ha reached on 17 Sept
    8.3 %
  4. União das Freguesias de Atães e Rendufe e Mesão Frio 4,159 inhabitants · 4.3 km from the town
    19 ha reached on 17 Sept
    1.5 %

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

  • Scrub and transitional woodland67 %
  • Mixed forest26 %
  • Agricultural areas4.6 %
  • Artificial surfaces1.0 %
  • Other natural land1.0 %

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 232 ha (the satellite measured 199 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)
17 Sept 26.2 °C 23 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept after 25.2 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
19 Sept after 22.5 °C 53 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Sept after 19.9 °C 68 % 25 km/h 4.7 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Sept 2024
After · 24 Sept 2024

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 19 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 137 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 82: 5.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak137 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM10227 µg/m³
Optical depth4.31
151617181920
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 · 24Every 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 Fafe fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 17 September 2024 and 17 September 2024: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 16 September 2024 at 22:10 and declared extinguished on 17 September 2024.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 199 hectares (2.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Golães (83 ha, 17 %); Passos (50 ha, 13 %); Arões (São Romão) (47 ha, 8.3 %); União das Freguesias de Atães e Rendufe e Mesão Frio (19 ha, 1.5 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The closest fire to a town centre came within 0.4 km of Passos. 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 26.2 °C, humidity dropped to 23 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very 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.

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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.