Parres fire, 28 March 2023 Parres, Amieva
The fire started on 28 March 2023 in Parres, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 990 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 March 2023 at 09:44 and declared extinguished on 1 April 2023.
It is the 9th largest in Asturias since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 13 in Spain in 2023, of 124.
The power measured by the satellite is low (26.7 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…
- Burnt area
- 990ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 4days
- 28 Mar 2023 – 31 Mar 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Mar
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 47
- in a single hotspot: 27 MW
- Danger at start
- 3
- Very low · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 172MW
- 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 one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.7 mm on 10 Apr.
This area had burned before
6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 59 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
621 ha reached on 30 Mar4.9 %
-
Amieva 591 inhabitants · 8.3 km from the centre369 ha reached on 30 Mar3.2 %
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 land66 %
- Broadleaved forest15 %
- Mixed forest11 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland7.3 %
- Agricultural areas1.0 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 67 %
- ZEPA + LIC Ponga-Amieva ES1200009
Natura 2000 sites (European Environment Agency, 2024 release) crossed by the perimeter.
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 29 March 2023 and burned 1,048 ha (the satellite measured 990 ha).
- Parres Aballe 29 March 2023 · 09:44 1,048 ha · extinguished on 1 April 2023 · cause: arson
MITECO, Estadística General de Incendios Forestales (EGIF). This is the agency’s consolidated statistic: it measures the area in its own way, which is why it can differ from the satellite.
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 28 Mar | 24.7 °C | 34 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 3 |
| 29 Mar | 26.4 °C | 24 % | 62 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 10 |
| 30 Mar | 22.4 °C | 35 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 8 |
| 31 Mar | 17.9 °C | 41 % | 59 km/h | 0.2 mm | Low 9 |
| 1 Apr after | 12.4 °C | 60 % | 44 km/h | 19.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 2 Apr after | 11.2 °C | 71 % | 27 km/h | 2.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 3 Apr after | 13.0 °C | 61 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 4 Apr after | 13.0 °C | 65 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 5 Apr after | 13.9 °C | 57 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 1 |
| 6 Apr after | 14.5 °C | 32 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 7 Apr after | 19.0 °C | 58 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 2 |
| 8 Apr after | 21.4 °C | 39 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very low 4 |
| 9 Apr after | 20.4 °C | 41 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Low 5 |
| 10 Apr after | 19.2 °C | 47 % | 30 km/h | 2.7 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 31 March 2023 the air beside the fire reached 50 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 29: 1.9 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 · 47Every 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 Parres fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 28 March 2023 and 31 March 2023: 4 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 29 March 2023 at 09:44 and declared extinguished on 1 April 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 990 hectares (9.9 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Parres (621 ha, 4.9 %); Amieva (369 ha, 3.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Parres and came within 3.7 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 26.4 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 62 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 10, class Low.
- Where does this data come from?
- From the EFFIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Spain (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.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 47 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 1,048 official ha against 990 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.