Guimarães fire, September 2024 Souto (Santa Maria), Souto (São Salvador) e Gondomar, Gonça, Garfe
The fire started on 13 September 2024 in Souto (Santa Maria), Souto (São Salvador) e Gondomar, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,023 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 5 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 16 September 2024 at 15:57 and declared extinguished on 17 September 2024.
Number 21 in Portugal in 2024, of 69.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,023ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 6days
- 13 Sept 2024 – 18 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 5
- freguesias
- Started on
- 13 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 108
- in a single hotspot: 59 MW
- Danger at start
- 34
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 756MW
- 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 5 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.0 mm on 20 Sept.
This area had burned before
33% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 314 ha in 2016, 8 ha in 2020, 13 ha in 2021, 32 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 342 ha that had burned before.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Souto (Santa Maria), Souto (São Salvador) e Gondomar 2,044 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started372 ha reached on 17 Sept27 %
-
Gonça 954 inhabitants · fire reached the centre303 ha reached on 17 Sept43 %
-
Garfe 983 inhabitants · fire reached the centre191 ha reached on 17 Sept36 %
-
Freitas e Vila Cova 748 inhabitants · 1.2 km from the centre129 ha reached on 17 Sept11 %
-
Arosa e Castelões 699 inhabitants · 2.3 km from the centre27 ha reached on 17 Sept4.8 %
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 %
- Mixed forest11 %
- Other natural land9.1 %
- Artificial surfaces3.8 %
- Agricultural areas1.2 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 4.7 hectares of built-up land and about 90 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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
Complex of 2 fires according to ICNF
According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 997 ha (the satellite measured 1,023 ha).
ICNF 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 Guimarães Gonça 16 September 2024 · 15:57 989 ha · extinguished on 17 September 2024 · cause: rekindling
- 2 Póvoa de Lanhoso Vilela 16 September 2024 · 19:06 7 ha · extinguished on 16 September 2024 · cause: negligence
Total according to ICNF: 997 ha, 97 % of the 1,023 ha in the satellite perimeter.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 13 Sept | 25.8 °C | 26 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 14 Sept | 27.0 °C | 26 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 15 Sept | 30.3 °C | 13 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 16 Sept | 31.9 °C | 12 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 17 Sept | 27.6 °C | 22 % | 64 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 18 Sept | 28.4 °C | 25 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 19 Sept after | 24.4 °C | 50 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 22 |
| 20 Sept after | 22.4 °C | 61 % | 28 km/h | 6.0 mm | Very low 1 |
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 19 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 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 · 108Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Guimarães fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 September 2024 to 18 September 2024 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 September 2024 to 17 September 2024. According to ICNF, the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 16 September 2024 at 15:57 and declared extinguished on 17 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,023 hectares (10.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 5 municipalities: Souto (Santa Maria), Souto (São Salvador) e Gondomar (372 ha, 27 %); Gonça (303 ha, 43 %); Garfe (191 ha, 36 %); Freitas e Vila Cova (129 ha, 11 %); Arosa e Castelões (27 ha, 4.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Souto (Santa Maria), Souto (São Salvador) e Gondomar and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 31.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 64 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 13 September 2024 to 17 September 2024. 108 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 997 official ha against 1,023 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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 2025, 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 (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.