How long did the Gouveia fire last?

Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2016 and 9 August 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 184 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cativelos (149 ha, 10 %); Vila Nova de Tazem (33 ha, 2.1 %); Santiago de Cassurrães e Póvoa de Cervães (3 ha, 0.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 2.1 km of the centre of Vila Nova de Tazem, 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 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

PT · Portugal · 2016-08-08 → 2016-08-09

Gouveia fire, 8 August 2016 Cativelos, Vila Nova de Tazem, Santiago de Cassurrães e Póvoa de Cervães

Out · last detection 8 Aug 2016, 13:16 UTC

The fire started on 8 August 2016 in Cativelos, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 184 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 119 in Portugal in 2016, of 181.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Seia · 2017 Penalva do Castelo · 2024 Nelas · 2024 Serra da Estrela · 2022

Burnt area: 184ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 2days; 8 Aug 2016 – 9 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 3; freguesias
Started on: 8 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 11; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start: 49; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 55MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Aug9 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

8 Aug 2016 · 55 MW · 11

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

50km/h · peak gust

19%lowest humidity

It had gone 31 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

Cativelos 610 inhabitants · 2.4 km from the centre where it started

149 ha reached on 8 Aug

10 %
Vila Nova de Tazem 1,469 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre

33 ha reached on 8 Aug

2.1 %
Santiago de Cassurrães e Póvoa de Cervães 1,218 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre

3 ha

0.1 %

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 woodland75 %
Agricultural areas25 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area0.58 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.58 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 7 August 2016 and burned 132 ha (the satellite measured 184 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

Gouveia Cativelos 7 August 2016 · 16:57 132 ha · extinguished on 9 August 2016 · cause: arson

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 Aug	38.0 °C	19 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
9 Aug	33.8 °C	26 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
10 Aug after	30.6 °C	29 %	59 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
11 Aug after	31.4 °C	29 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
12 Aug after	33.3 °C	25 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Aug after	34.1 °C	23 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
14 Aug after	33.0 °C	32 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Aug after	30.7 °C	35 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
16 Aug after	28.9 °C	36 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
17 Aug after	27.1 °C	50 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
18 Aug after	29.6 °C	36 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
19 Aug after	26.0 °C	64 %	36 km/h	0.2 mm	Moderate 21

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 1 Aug 2016

After · 16 Aug 2016

Before After

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 12 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³

Days over the guideline3 days

PM10148 µg/m³

WHO 15

6789101112

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 · 11Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Gouveia fire last?: Copernicus dates it between 8 August 2016 and 9 August 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 184 hectares (1.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cativelos (149 ha, 10 %); Vila Nova de Tazem (33 ha, 2.1 %); Santiago de Cassurrães e Póvoa de Cervães (3 ha, 0.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 2.1 km of the centre of Vila Nova de Tazem, 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 38.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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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How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 11 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 132 official ha against 184 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 2015, 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.

Where it burned