Vega de Pas fire, 4 March 2026 Vega de Pas
The fire started on 4 March 2026 in Vega de Pas, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 381 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 22th largest in Cantabria since 2016 (of 179 with a page). Number 60 in Spain in 2026, of 196.
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- Burnt area
- 381ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 1day
- 4 Mar 2026 – 4 Mar 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 4 Mar
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 1
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Average daily power
- 4MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
4 Mar 2026 · 4 MW · 1
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 59 ha in 2017, 26 ha in 2018, 292 ha in 2019, 29 ha in 2020, 241 ha in 2021, 260 ha in 2022, 176 ha in 2023, 28 ha in 2024, 305 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 378 ha that had burned before.
- 305 ha Vega de Pas fire, February 2025 1,745 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 292 ha Vega de Pas fire, February 2019 819 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 218 ha Vega de Pas fire, February 2021 745 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 215 ha Vega de Pas fire, February 2022 482 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 84 ha Vega de Pas fire, March 2023 170 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 59 ha Vega de Pas fire, March 2017 352 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
382 ha4.4 %
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 land83 %
- Broadleaved forest16 %
- Agricultural areas0.8 %
Natura 2000 protected area affected: 100 %
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 was no noticeable 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
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 5 March 2026 the air beside the fire reached 23 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 · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 1,745 haVega de PasFebruary 2025 · 5 days · 0 km away
- 819 haVega de Pas15 February 2019 · 2 days · 2 km away
- 745 haVega de PasFebruary 2021 · 3 days · 2 km away
- 903 haVega de Pas15 February 2019 · 3 days · 3 km away
- 1,540 haSelaya24 February 2026 · 9 days · 4 km away
- 822 haSelaya20 February 2021 · 1 day · 4 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Vega de Pas fire last?
- Copernicus dates it between 4 March 2026 and 4 March 2026: 1 day between the first and last image with fire.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 381 hectares (3.8 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Vega de Pas (382 ha, 4.4 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire started in Vega de Pas and came within 2.9 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.
- 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 2026 → 4 March 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. No Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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 (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.