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Vilarinho fire, October 2018 Vilarinho, Caldas de Vizela (São Miguel e São João)

Out · last detection 2 Oct 2018, 14:38 UTC

The fire started on 2 October 2018 in Vilarinho, Portugal, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus mapped a burnt perimeter of 127 hectares from satellite imagery, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 19 in Portugal in 2018, of 23.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

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Burnt area
127ha
Copernicus perimeter
Duration
3days
2 Oct 2018 – 4 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
freguesias
Started on
2 Oct
2018
Heat detections
4
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
45MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Oct4 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

2 Oct 2018 · 45 MW · 4

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

26°high
53km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 23 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 17.4 mm on 11 Oct.

This area had burned before

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

What happened to each town

  1. Vilarinho 3,591 inhabitants · fire reached the centre where it started
    65 ha reached on 2 Oct
    12 %
  2. Caldas de Vizela (São Miguel e São João) 11,073 inhabitants · 1.3 km from the centre
    61 ha reached on 2 Oct
    8.0 %

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 woodland54 %
  • Other natural land45 %
  • Agricultural areas0.8 %
  • Artificial surfaces0.8 %

Land cover inside the perimeter according to Corine Land Cover, as reported by Copernicus.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 60 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
2 Oct 26.5 °C 18 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Oct 27.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
4 Oct 27.4 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
5 Oct after 24.4 °C 36 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
6 Oct after 21.0 °C 51 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
7 Oct after 21.4 °C 29 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
8 Oct after 23.0 °C 34 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
9 Oct after 23.3 °C 34 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
10 Oct after 22.6 °C 42 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
11 Oct after 19.9 °C 65 % 53 km/h 17.4 mm Very low 0

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 25 Sept 2018
After · 11 Oct 2018

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 4Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Portugal ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Vilarinho fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 2 October 2018 to 4 October 2018 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 October 2018 to 2 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter Copernicus measured from satellite imagery is 127 hectares (1.3 km²). Official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Vilarinho (65 ha, 12 %); Caldas de Vizela (São Miguel e São João) (61 ha, 8.0 %).
Did the fire reach a town?
The fire started in Vilarinho and reached its centre: the point marking it was inside the burnt area or less than 500 metres from it. That does not mean houses burned.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 26.5 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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 ›

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.
  1. Last day with fire: 2 October 2018 → 4 October 2018.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: EFFIS (Copernicus), mapped on satellite imagery.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 2 October 2018 to 2 October 2018. 4 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 2020, 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.