How long did the Tabua fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2017 to 10 September 2017 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2017 to 8 September 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,025 hectares (10.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Tabua (432 ha, 39 %); Serra de Água (262 ha, 11 %); Ponta do Sol (203 ha, 7.4 %); Ribeira Brava (132 ha, 7.1 %).

Did the fire reach a town?

The fire came within 1.9 km of the centre of Serra de Água, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 21.2 °C, humidity dropped to 50 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.

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.

PT · Portugal · 2017-09-06 → 2017-09-10

Tabua fire, September 2017 Tabua, Serra de Água, Ponta do Sol

Out · last detection 9 Sept 2017, 14:11 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Tabua, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,025 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 4 municipalities.

Number 52 in Portugal in 2017, of 210.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Serra de Água · 2024 Jardim da Serra · 2019 Arco da Calheta · 2023 Canhas · 2016

Burnt area: 1,025ha; Copernicus perimeter
Duration: 5days; 6 Sept 2017 – 10 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit: 4; freguesias
Started on: 6 Sept; 2017
Heat detections: 85; in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start: 12; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 255MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept10 Sept

Play back 9 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 9 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

21°high

45km/h · peak gust

50%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 11 Sept.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 0.6% of the area of London (10 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

Tabua 1,158 inhabitants · 3.1 km from the centre where it started

432 ha reached on 6 Sept

39 %
Serra de Água 973 inhabitants · 1.9 km from the centre

262 ha reached on 7 Sept

11 %
Ponta do Sol 3,597 inhabitants · 4.2 km from the centre

203 ha reached on 6 Sept

7.4 %
Ribeira Brava 6,233 inhabitants · 3.8 km from the centre

132 ha reached on 7 Sept

7.1 %

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 land64 %
Mixed forest20 %
Broadleaved forest10 %
Scrub and transitional woodland4.1 %
Agricultural areas1.2 %

Natura 2000 protected area affected: 0 %

LIC Maciço Montanhoso Central da Ilha da Madeira PTMAD0002

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 2015

Built-up area1.2 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 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

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)
6 Sept	21.2 °C	66 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
7 Sept	19.6 °C	50 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
8 Sept	20.3 °C	54 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 13
9 Sept	19.1 °C	57 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 12
10 Sept	18.6 °C	65 %	29 km/h	0.3 mm	Low 11
11 Sept after	20.2 °C	65 %	32 km/h	1.7 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 30 Aug 2017

After · 17 Sept 2017

Before After

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 9 September 2017 the air beside the fire reached 11 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak11 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1024 µg/m³

456789101112

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 · 85Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Tabua fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2017 to 10 September 2017 (5 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2017 to 8 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,025 hectares (10.2 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Tabua (432 ha, 39 %); Serra de Água (262 ha, 11 %); Ponta do Sol (203 ha, 7.4 %); Ribeira Brava (132 ha, 7.1 %).
Did the fire reach a town?: The fire came within 1.9 km of the centre of Serra de Água, the closest of the areas it touched. 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 21.2 °C, humidity dropped to 50 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 13, class Moderate.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
EFFIS · Copernicus ↗

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

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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.

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How we know this

Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 September 2017 to 8 September 2017. 85 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.

Where it burned