Seixal fire, September 2024 Castelo, Amora
The fire started on 11 September 2024 in Amora, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 835 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities. According to ICNF, it was detected on 11 September 2024 at 12:52 and declared extinguished on 12 September 2024.
Number 25 in Portugal in 2024, of 69.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 835ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 2days
- 11 Sept 2024 – 12 Sept 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- freguesias
- Started on
- 11 Sept
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 21
- in a single hotspot: 143 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 454MW
- 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 43 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.0 mm on 20 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).
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
-
Castelo 20,218 inhabitants · 3.9 km from the centre604 ha reached on 12 Sept3.4 %
-
234 ha reached on 11 Sept9.6 %
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 woodland66 %
- Coniferous forest33 %
- Other natural land1.3 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 98 %
- LIC Fernão Ferro / Lagoa de Albufeira PTCON0054
- ZEPA Lagoa Pequena PTZPE0049
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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 ICNF, this fire started on 11 September 2024 and burned 814 ha (the satellite measured 835 ha).
- Seixal Amora 11 September 2024 · 12:52 814 ha · extinguished on 12 September 2024 · 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Sept | 27.8 °C | 31 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Sept | 28.4 °C | 38 % | 55 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 13 Sept after | 32.4 °C | 27 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 14 Sept after | 29.2 °C | 32 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Sept after | 33.6 °C | 20 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Sept after | 32.9 °C | 17 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 17 Sept after | 31.9 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 18 Sept after | 24.6 °C | 36 % | 39 km/h | 0.1 mm | High 37 |
| 19 Sept after | 25.3 °C | 55 % | 35 km/h | 0.4 mm | High 25 |
| 20 Sept after | 24.4 °C | 56 % | 37 km/h | 2.0 mm | Low 10 |
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 9 September 2024 the air beside the fire reached 18 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 · 21Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 281 haSesimbra CasteloAugust 2017 · 2 days · 6 km away
- 446 haPalmelaJuly 2022 · 1 day · 20 km away
- 142 haSetúbal (São Sebastião)July 2026 · 62 days · 26 km away
- 232 haCascais AlcabidecheJuly 2023 · 1 day · 32 km away
- 606 haCascais AlcabidecheOctober 2018 · 2 days · 35 km away
- 287 haMafra Venda do Pinheiro e Santo Estêvão das GalésJuly 2022 · 1 day · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Seixal fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 11 September 2024 and 12 September 2024: 2 days between the first and last image with fire. According to ICNF, it was detected on 11 September 2024 at 12:52 and declared extinguished on 12 September 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 835 hectares (8.4 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Castelo (604 ha, 3.4 %); Amora (234 ha, 9.6 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Amora and came within 2.7 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 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 31 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 ›
- 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. 21 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- Compared with ICNF: 814 official ha against 835 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 2025, 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 (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.