Santa Eulalia de Cabrera fire, September 2016 Encinedo, San Justo
The fire started on 12 September 2016 in Encinedo, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,229 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 11 September 2016 at 19:13 and declared extinguished on 13 September 2016.
It is the 20th largest in León since 2016 (of 86 with a page). Number 14 in Spain in 2016, of 69.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,229ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 12 Sept 2016 – 13 Sept 2016
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 12 Sept
- 2016
- Heat detections
- 54
- in a single hotspot: 311 MW
- Danger at start
- 24
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 2.3GW
- 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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 16 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.6 mm on 14 Sept.
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).
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
-
773 ha reached on 12 Sept4.0 %
-
San Justo 207 inhabitants · 5.8 km from the centre457 ha reached on 12 Sept6.1 %
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
- Other natural land96 %
- Scrub and transitional woodland2.8 %
- Broadleaved forest1.2 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 84 %
- ZEPA + LIC Sierra de la Cabrera ES4190110 · ES4130024
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.
People and buildings inside the perimeter
GHSL 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
According to EGIF (MITECO), this fire started on 11 September 2016 and burned 1,198 ha (the satellite measured 1,229 ha).
- San Justo Los Vados 11 September 2016 · 19:13 1,198 ha · extinguished on 13 September 2016 · 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.
Checked against the press
Checked on 30 September 2026We checked this page against 3 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- incendio de Encinedo · incendio de Santa Eulalia de Cabrera
Sources
- La superficie arbolada quemada desciende un 56 % respecto de la media de la última década — BurgosNoticias, 14 October 2016
- Castilla y León registra 1.139 incendios forestales en lo que va de año — SALAMANCArtv AL DIA, 14 October 2016
- El incendio de Fabero fue el más dañino de todo el verano en León con 2.620 hectáreas quemadas — Leonoticias, 14 October 2016
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 12 Sept | 22.6 °C | 29 % | 59 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 13 Sept | 15.1 °C | 56 % | 53 km/h | 20.0 mm | Very low 0 |
| 14 Sept after | 7.2 °C | 58 % | 49 km/h | 3.6 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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 12 September 2016 the air beside the fire reached 40 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 26: 1.8 times the WHO daily 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 · 54Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,927 haEncinedoAugust 2017 · 6 days · 7 km away
- 25,953 haPorto de Sanabria PortoAugust 2025 · 17 days · 11 km away
- 26,241 haLlamas de Cabrera PonferradaAugust 2025 · 14 days · 24 km away
- 4,416 haPuente de Domingo FlórezAugust 2025 · 9 days · 27 km away
- 12,735 haCarballeda de ValdeorrasJuly 2022 · 8 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Santa Eulalia de Cabrera fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 12 September 2016 and 13 September 2016: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to EGIF (MITECO), it was detected on 11 September 2016 at 19:13 and declared extinguished on 13 September 2016.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,229 hectares (12.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Encinedo (773 ha, 4.0 %); San Justo (457 ha, 6.1 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Encinedo and came within 2.5 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 22.6 °C, humidity dropped to 29 % and gusts hit 59 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 24, class High.
- 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. 54 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with EGIF (MITECO): 1,198 official ha against 1,229 ha of perimeter; they agree within 25%.
- Checked against news and agencies: 3 confirmed sources.
- 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.
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.