Vilardevós fire, 11 August 2025 Riós, Vilardevós
The fire started on 11 August 2025 in Vilardevós, Spain, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 1,107 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 22th largest in Ourense since 2016 (of 118 with a page). Number 44 in Spain in 2025, of 158.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 1,107ha
- Copernicus perimeter
- Duration
- 7days
- 11 Aug 2025 – 17 Aug 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 11 Aug
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 100
- in a single hotspot: 181 MW
- Danger at start
- 43
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 679MW
- 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 21 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
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
-
Riós 1,379 inhabitants · 2.1 km from the centre686 ha reached on 13 Aug6.0 %
-
422 ha reached on 13 Aug2.8 %
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 woodland37 %
- Agricultural areas23 %
- Broadleaved forest22 %
- Other natural land17 %
Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.
Checked against the press
Checked on 2 October 2026We checked this page against 4 sources published once the fire was out. This is what they add:
- Also known as
- Vilardevós-Moialde · segundo incendio de Vilardevós · incendio de Moialde
- Official area reported: 1,102 ha (the satellite measured 1,107 ha)
- Declared extinguished: 25 August 2025
Sources
- Medio Rural informa de la situación de los incendios forestales con datos recogidos hasta las 08.30 h. de hoy — Xunta de Galicia - Medio Rural, 26 August 2025 · official source
- Extinguidos cinco incendios y permanecen activos tres grandes focos en Galicia — GaliciaXa, 26 August 2025
- Cuatro incendios arrasan 3.700 hectáreas en el Macizo Central de Ourense — Atlántico Diario, 12 August 2025
- El segundo incendio de Vilardevós, bajo control tras levantarse la Situación 2 y calcinar 40 hectáreas — Diario do Tâmega, 12 August 2025
Official figures are measured differently from satellite ones and sometimes cover only part of the fire.
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 Aug | 34.9 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 12 Aug | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Aug | 32.4 °C | 27 % | 38 km/h | 0.4 mm | Very high 43 |
| 14 Aug | 34.0 °C | 24 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 15 Aug | 35.3 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 16 Aug | 33.6 °C | 25 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 17 Aug | 33.2 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 18 Aug after | 27.8 °C | 30 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 19 Aug after | 25.0 °C | 33 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Aug after | 25.5 °C | 28 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 21 Aug after | 25.8 °C | 35 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 34 |
| 22 Aug after | 27.6 °C | 33 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 23 Aug after | 29.9 °C | 24 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 32 |
| 24 Aug after | 31.1 °C | 20 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
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 17 August 2025 the air beside the fire reached 228 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 120: 8.0 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 · 100Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 12,026 haA MezquitaAugust 2025 · 9 days · 20 km away
- 3,493 haVilarelho Da RaiaAugust 2025 · 2 days · 23 km away
- 3,634 haLazaAugust 2022 · 7 days · 25 km away
- 24,471 haMonterreiAugust 2025 · 8 days · 26 km away
- 7,090 haVilariño de ConsoJuly 2022 · 10 days · 27 km away
- 30,754 haChandrexa de QueixaAugust 2025 · 20 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Vilardevós fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 August 2025 to 17 August 2025 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 August 2025 to 14 August 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 1,107 hectares (11.1 km²). Official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Riós (686 ha, 6.0 %); Vilardevós (422 ha, 2.8 %).
- Did the fire reach a town?
- The fire came within 2.1 km of the centre of Riós, 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 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, class Extreme.
- 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 August 2025 to 14 August 2025. 100 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Checked against news and agencies: 4 confirmed sources.
- Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
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.