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Rio Douro fire, September 2016 Rio Douro, Salto

Out · last detection 8 Sept 2016, 13:35 UTC

The fire started on 2 September 2016 in Rio Douro, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,582 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 6 September 2016 at 06:09 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2016.

It is the 2th largest in Cabeceiras de Basto since 2016 (of 22 with a page). Number 22 in Portugal in 2016, of 179.

Compare with…

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Burnt area
1,582ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
7days
2 Sept 2016 – 8 Sept 2016
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
2 Sept
2016
Heat detections
148
in a single hotspot: 144 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
512MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Sept8 Sept
8 Sept 2016

How it evolved, day by day

2 Sept 2016 · 49 MW · 6 5 Sept 2016 · 20 MW · 2 6 Sept 2016 · 2,274 MW · 75 7 Sept 2016 · 210 MW · 64 8 Sept 2016 · 7 MW · 1
2 Sept 5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
46km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 26.8 mm on 13 Sept.

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% of the area of London (16 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. Rio Douro 816 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre where it started
    1,419 ha reached on 2 Sept
    33 %
  2. Salto 1,263 inhabitants · 5.1 km from the centre
    164 ha reached on 5 Sept
    2.1 %

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 woodland42 %
  • Other natural land40 %
  • Agricultural areas19 %

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

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area7.4 ha
Residents≈ 150

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.4 hectares of built-up land and about 150 residents (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

Complex of 3 fires according to ICNF

According to ICNF, 3 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 1,834 ha (the satellite measured 1,582 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 30 ha 2 249 ha 3 1,555 ha
2 Sept7 Sept
arson
  1. 1 Cabeceiras de Basto Rio Douro 2 September 2016 · 01:14 30 ha · extinguished on 2 September 2016 · cause: arson
  2. 2 Cabeceiras de Basto Rio Douro 2 September 2016 · 10:24 249 ha · extinguished on 2 September 2016 · cause: arson
  3. 3 Cabeceiras de Basto Rio Douro 6 September 2016 · 06:09 1,555 ha · extinguished on 7 September 2016 · cause: arson

Total according to ICNF: 1,834 ha, 116 % of the 1,582 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)
2 Sept 29.0 °C 29 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
3 Sept 29.9 °C 28 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
4 Sept 29.1 °C 25 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
5 Sept 30.1 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
6 Sept 32.2 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Sept 27.8 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
8 Sept 22.0 °C 42 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
9 Sept after 22.7 °C 32 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
10 Sept after 23.0 °C 47 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Sept after 25.1 °C 41 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
12 Sept after 24.8 °C 40 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
13 Sept after 14.6 °C 63 % 54 km/h 26.8 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Aug 2016
After · 15 Sept 2016

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 7 September 2016 the air beside the fire reached 240 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 95: 6.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak240 µg/m³
Days over the guideline7 days
PM10276 µg/m³
311234567891011
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 · 148Every 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 Rio Douro fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 September 2016 to 8 September 2016 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2016 to 7 September 2016. According to ICNF, the largest of the 3 recorded fires was detected on 6 September 2016 at 06:09 and declared extinguished on 7 September 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,582 hectares (15.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Rio Douro (1,419 ha, 33 %); Salto (164 ha, 2.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Rio Douro and came within 1.3 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 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 39, 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 6 September 2016 to 7 September 2016. 148 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • Compared with ICNF: 1,834 official ha against 1,582 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
  • 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.