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Ribeira de Pena fire, October 2017 Alvadia, Borbela e Lamas de Olo, União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões

Out · last detection 15 Oct 2017, 12:58 UTC

The fire started on 7 October 2017 in Alvadia, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 2,117 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 7 October 2017 at 01:30 and declared extinguished on 8 October 2017.

Number 35 in Portugal in 2017, of 211.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Vila Real · 2022Vila Pouca de Aguiar · 2024Vila Real · 2025Ribeira de Pena · 2016

Burnt area
2,117ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
9days
7 Oct 2017 – 15 Oct 2017
Municipalities hit
4
freguesias
Started on
7 Oct
2017
Heat detections
157
in a single hotspot: 233 MW
Danger at start
37
High · FWI index
Average daily power
520MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Oct15 Oct
15 Oct 2017

How it evolved, day by day

7 Oct 2017 · 2,683 MW · 95 8 Oct 2017 · 718 MW · 42 9 Oct 2017 · 12 MW · 2 10 Oct 2017 · 81 MW · 4 11 Oct 2017 · 117 MW · 10 13 Oct 2017 · 20 MW · 2 15 Oct 2017 · 10 MW · 2
7 Oct 8 Oct 9 Oct 10 Oct 11 Oct 13 Oct 15 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

23°high
53km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 15 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 10.8 mm on 17 Oct.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Alvadia 165 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    1,060 ha reached on 7 Oct
    31 %
  2. Borbela e Lamas de Olo 2,890 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre
    791 ha reached on 7 Oct
    19 %
  3. União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões 2,285 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre
    240 ha reached on 8 Oct
    4.0 %
  4. Adoufe e Vilarinho de Samardã 2,658 inhabitants · 2.0 km from the centre
    28 ha reached on 11 Oct
    0.7 %

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 land97 %
  • Scrub and transitional woodland1.3 %
  • Mixed forest1.2 %
  • Agricultural areas0.8 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %

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

Complex of 3 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 1,939 ha (the satellite measured 2,117 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.

When each one burned

1 1,874 ha 2 59 ha 3 6 ha
7 Oct16 Oct
negligence rekindling
  1. 1 Ribeira de Pena Alvadia 7 October 2017 · 01:30 1,874 ha · extinguished on 8 October 2017 · cause: negligence
  2. 2 Ribeira de Pena Limões 8 October 2017 · 01:44 59 ha · extinguished on 8 October 2017 · cause: negligence
  3. 3 Ribeira de Pena Alvadia 15 October 2017 · 15:10 6 ha · extinguished on 15 October 2017 · cause: rekindling

Total according to ICNF: 1,939 ha, 92 % of the 2,117 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)
7 Oct 21.5 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
8 Oct 22.9 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
9 Oct 22.1 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
10 Oct 22.5 °C 13 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
11 Oct 20.6 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
12 Oct 22.6 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
13 Oct 21.1 °C 27 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
14 Oct 23.2 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
15 Oct 24.9 °C 23 % 66 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
16 Oct after 17.7 °C 36 % 59 km/h 0.4 mm Moderate 20
17 Oct after 12.3 °C 48 % 61 km/h 10.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Sept 2017
After · 22 Oct 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 16 October 2017 the air beside the fire reached 372 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 168: 11 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak372 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10416 µg/m³
56789101112131415161718
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 · 157Every 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 Ribeira de Pena fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 October 2017 to 15 October 2017 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 October 2017 to 12 October 2017. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 7 October 2017 at 01:30 and declared extinguished on 8 October 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 2,117 hectares (21.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Alvadia (1,060 ha, 31 %); Borbela e Lamas de Olo (791 ha, 19 %); União das Freguesias de Cerva e Limões (240 ha, 4.0 %); Adoufe e Vilarinho de Samardã (28 ha, 0.7 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Alvadia 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 22.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, 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

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.

Report an error
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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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 October 2017 to 12 October 2017. 157 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 1,939 official ha against 2,117 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.