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Mirandela fire, 16 July 2017 Caravelas, Vale de Asnes, União das Freguesias de Bornes e Burga

Out · last detection 16 Jul 2017, 03:20 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2017 in Caravelas, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 282 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 123 in Portugal in 2017, of 211.

The power measured by the satellite is low (2.8 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…

Suggestions: Mirandela · 2025Valpaços · 2026Vinhais · 2025Torre de Moncorvo · 2026

Burnt area
282ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
1day
16 Jul 2017 – 16 Jul 2017
Municipalities hit
3
freguesias
Started on
16 Jul
2017
Heat detections
5
in a single hotspot: 3 MW
Danger at start
38
High · FWI index
Average daily power
9MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul16 Jul

How it evolved, day by day

16 Jul 2017 · 9 MW · 5

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
32km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 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

  1. Caravelas 152 inhabitants · 0.6 km from the centre where it started
    193 ha reached on 16 Jul
    15 %
  2. Vale de Asnes 210 inhabitants · 1.6 km from the centre
    86 ha reached on 16 Jul
    4.0 %
  3. União das Freguesias de Bornes e Burga 342 inhabitants · 1.4 km from the centre
    4 ha
    0.2 %

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 land70 %
  • Agricultural areas19 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland5.3 %
  • Broadleaved forest5.3 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable 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 15 July 2017 and burned 207 ha (the satellite measured 282 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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)
16 Jul 34.9 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
17 Jul after 34.1 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jul after 29.9 °C 25 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Jul after 25.3 °C 46 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Jul after 26.9 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
21 Jul after 26.4 °C 31 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
22 Jul after 27.0 °C 36 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
23 Jul after 29.7 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
24 Jul after 28.7 °C 32 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
25 Jul after 29.7 °C 29 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Jul after 31.6 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 36

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2017
After · 23 Jul 2017

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 18 July 2017 the air beside the fire reached 38 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 16: 1.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak38 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM1050 µg/m³
141516171819
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 · 5Every 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 Mirandela fire last?
Copernicus dates it between 16 July 2017 and 16 July 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 282 hectares (2.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Caravelas (193 ha, 15 %); Vale de Asnes (86 ha, 4.0 %); União das Freguesias de Bornes e Burga (4 ha, 0.2 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Caravelas and came within 0.6 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 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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

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

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 5 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 207 official ha against 282 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.