Salas fire, March 2019 Spain
The fire started on 3 March 2019 in Salas, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 625 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality. According to EGIF (MITECO), the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 2 March 2019 at 20:20 and declared extinguished on 6 March 2019.
It is the 16th largest in Asturias since 2016 (of 225 with a page). Number 18 in Spain in 2019, of 102.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 625ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 3 Mar 2019 – 4 Mar 2019
- Municipalities hit
- 0
- municipalities
- Started on
- 3 Mar
- 2019
- Heat detections
- 23
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 196MW
- 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.
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 burned
- Other natural land58 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland33 %
- Broadleaved forest8.6 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 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
Complex of 2 fires according to EGIF (MITECO)
According to EGIF (MITECO), 2 fires started inside this perimeter on these dates, totalling 776 ha (the satellite measured 625 ha).
EGIF (MITECO) 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.
- 1 Belmonte de Miranda Pontigo 24 February 2019 · 20:17 6 ha · extinguished on 24 February 2019 · cause: arson
- 2 Salas Picos de Silvota y Otros 2 March 2019 · 20:20 770 ha · extinguished on 6 March 2019 · cause: arson
Total according to EGIF (MITECO): 776 ha, 124 % of the 625 ha in the satellite perimeter.
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.
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.
Detections table · 0Every 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 Salas fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 3 March 2019 and 4 March 2019: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), the largest of the 2 recorded fires was detected on 2 March 2019 at 20:20 and declared extinguished on 6 March 2019.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 625 hectares (6.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Start date: 25 February 2019 → 3 March 2019.
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): 776 official ha against 625 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- 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.