How long did the Oliveira do Bairro fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2016 to 14 August 2016 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2016 to 11 August 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 101 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bustos, Troviscal e Mamarrosa (48 ha, 1.7 %); Covões e Camarneira (46 ha, 1.2 %); Ouca (7 ha, 0.4 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 2.6 km of the centre of Ouca, 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 2016-08-09 → 2016-08-14

Oliveira do Bairro fire, August 2016 Bustos, Troviscal e Mamarrosa, Covões e Camarneira, Ouca

Out · last detection 14 Aug 2016, 13:04 UTC

The fire started on 9 August 2016 in Covões e Camarneira, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 101 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 178 in Portugal in 2016, of 181.

The power measured by the satellite is low (3.4 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: Quiaios · 2017 Anadia · 2016 Águeda · 2016 Oliveira de Azeméis · 2022

Burnt area: 101ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 6days; 9 Aug 2016 – 14 Aug 2016
Municipalities hit: 3; freguesias
Started on: 9 Aug; 2016
Heat detections: 2; in a single hotspot: 3 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 2MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Aug14 Aug

Play back 14 Aug 2016

How it evolved, day by day

11 Aug 14 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

34°high

44km/h · peak gust

27%lowest humidity

It had gone 35 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

Bustos, Troviscal e Mamarrosa 6,221 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre

48 ha reached on 14 Aug

1.7 %
Covões e Camarneira 2,754 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the centre where it started

46 ha reached on 11 Aug

1.2 %
Ouca 1,750 inhabitants · 2.6 km from the centre

7 ha

0.4 %

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 woodland78 %
Agricultural areas14 %
Mixed forest8.1 %

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

Official record

Several official records match this area

According to ICNF, 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 134 ha (the satellite measured 101 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.

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.

When each one burned

1 117 ha 2 18 ha

7 Aug9 Aug

cause unknown or not published

1 Oliveira do Bairro Bustos 7 August 2016 · 14:56 117 ha · extinguished on 7 August 2016 · cause: unknown
2 Oliveira do Bairro Bustos 8 August 2016 · 14:19 18 ha · extinguished on 8 August 2016 · cause: unknown

Total according to ICNF: 134 ha, 133 % of the 101 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)
11 Aug	33.5 °C	27 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
12 Aug	34.5 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
13 Aug	33.2 °C	23 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
14 Aug	28.0 °C	43 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
15 Aug after	26.4 °C	49 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
16 Aug after	25.1 °C	50 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
17 Aug after	24.6 °C	67 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
18 Aug after	26.5 °C	41 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
19 Aug after	24.5 °C	71 %	33 km/h	0.3 mm	Moderate 17
20 Aug after	25.6 °C	41 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
21 Aug after	32.4 °C	29 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Aug 2016

After · 21 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 10 August 2016 the air beside the fire reached 224 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 86: 5.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak224 µg/m³

Days over the guideline8 days

PM10251 µg/m³

WHO 15

91011121314151617

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 · 2Every 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 Oliveira do Bairro fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 August 2016 to 14 August 2016 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2016 to 11 August 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 101 hectares (1.0 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Bustos, Troviscal e Mamarrosa (48 ha, 1.7 %); Covões e Camarneira (46 ha, 1.2 %); Ouca (7 ha, 0.4 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 2.6 km of the centre of Ouca, 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 33.5 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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

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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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2016 to 11 August 2016. 2 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
Compared with ICNF: 134 official ha against 101 ha of perimeter; similar, but with reservations.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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