Sabugal fire, 29 August 2019 Vila do Touro, Águas Belas, Baraçal
The fire started on 29 August 2019 in Vila do Touro, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 571 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 3 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 August 2019 at 12:04 and declared extinguished on 30 August 2019.
It is the 5th largest in Sabugal since 2016 (of 11 with a page). Number 9 in Portugal in 2019, of 52.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 571ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 29 Aug 2019 – 29 Aug 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- freguesias
- Started on
- 29 Aug
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 34
- in a single hotspot: 192 MW
- Danger at start
- 26
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.7GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
29 Aug 2019 · 1,743 MW · 34
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 2 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.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Lisbon boundary: geoBoundaries · geoBoundaries, DG Territory (CC0 1.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
525 ha reached on 29 Aug22 %
-
Águas Belas 2.4 km from the centre24 ha1.2 %
-
Baraçal 3.0 km from the centre23 ha reached on 29 Aug1.4 %
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
- Other natural land80 %
- Agricultural areas12 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland7.7 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Official record
According to ICNF, this fire started on 29 August 2019 and burned 576 ha (the satellite measured 571 ha).
- Sabugal Vila do Touro 29 August 2019 · 12:04 576 ha · extinguished on 30 August 2019 · cause: negligence
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Aug | 30.4 °C | 26 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 30 Aug after | 30.8 °C | 29 % | 32 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 27 |
| 31 Aug after | 30.1 °C | 30 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 1 Sept after | 28.4 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Sept after | 29.5 °C | 31 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 3 Sept after | 30.9 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 4 Sept after | 30.6 °C | 18 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 5 Sept after | 26.5 °C | 24 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Sept after | 24.6 °C | 23 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 7 Sept after | 26.0 °C | 22 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 8 Sept after | 27.0 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
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 29 August 2019 the air beside the fire reached 20 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO 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 · 34Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 23,594 haSabugal Quintas de São BartolomeuAugust 2025 · 7 days · 2 km away
- 8,991 haGuarda Rochoso e Monte Margarida17 July 2017 · 3 days · 20 km away
- 5,226 haGuarda CerdeiraJuly 2026 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 4,268 haGuarda Lameiras14 October 2017 · 3 days · 24 km away
- 25,260 haSerra da Estrela SameiroAugust 2022 · 18 days · 31 km away
- 9,523 haGuarda Alverca da Beira/Bouça CovaAugust 2025 · 3 days · 33 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Sabugal fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 29 August 2019 and 29 August 2019: 1 day between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 29 August 2019 at 12:04 and declared extinguished on 30 August 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 571 hectares (5.7 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Vila do Touro (525 ha, 22 %); Águas Belas (24 ha, 1.2 %); Baraçal (23 ha, 1.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Vila do Touro 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 30.4 °C, humidity dropped to 26 % and gusts hit 29 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 26, class 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 ›
- ICNF · Instituto da Conservação da Natureza e das Florestas ↗
- ANEPC · Proteção Civil ↗
- Fogos.pt (ocorrências em tempo real) ↗
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. 34 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 576 official ha against 571 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 (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.