Ribadesella fire, February 2021 Llanes, Ribadesella
The fire started on 20 February 2021 in Ribadesella, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 532 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 22th largest in Asturias since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 21 in Spain in 2021, of 120.
Compare with…
We have the Copernicus perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.
- Burnt area
- 532ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 20 Feb 2021 – 20 Feb 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 20 Feb
- 2021
- Danger at start
- 1
- Very low · FWI index
Where it burned
The weather it burned in
It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 19.5 mm on 21 Feb.
This area had burned before
3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16 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
-
Llanes 13,486 inhabitants · 20.0 km from the centre342 ha1.3 %
-
190 ha2.2 %
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 land85 %
- Broadleaved forest6.9 %
- Mixed forest3.2 %
- Coniferous forest2.5 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland1.7 %
- Agricultural areas1.0 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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 EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 19 February 2021 and burned 370 ha (the satellite measured 532 ha). The two figures differ a lot, so these may not be exactly the same fire: take them as nearby records.
- Ribadesella Guadamia 19 February 2021 · 20:42 370 ha · extinguished on 21 February 2021 · 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 Feb | 14.4 °C | 43 % | 55 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very low 1 |
| 21 Feb after | 11.8 °C | 77 % | 47 km/h | 19.5 mm | Very low 0 |
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.
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ribadesella fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 20 February 2021 and 20 February 2021: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 532 hectares (5.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Llanes (342 ha, 1.3 %); Ribadesella (190 ha, 2.2 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Ribadesella and came within 6.3 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 14.4 °C, humidity dropped to 43 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 1, class Very 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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 370 official ha against 532 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 2020, 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 (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.