Large Wildfires
Large wildfires account for less than 1% of fires but around 60% of the area burned in Portugal in 2024.
With the wildfires that hit Portugal in 2024, we could not help but look deeper into this issue. The research brought to light alarming data about the country and the growing number of hectares burned.
There are several factors to consider, but an ICNF study covering 1 January to 15 September showed that around 60% of the total burned area belongs to so-called Large Wildfires (fires over 100 ha), even though these fires account for only 0.8% of all occurrences.
What does this mean?
It means that of the 16,897 hectares burned in the periods covered by the study, around 10,079 ha were consumed by Large Wildfires, and only 24 of these had been recorded up to that point.
Unfortunately, the situation worsened when, in the days after the study's cut-off date, several large fires broke out across the country, burning more than 100,000 hectares (provisional figures at the time of publication).
Because it is so recent, there is no official data yet on the number of hectares burned, but it is believed that this event could turn 2024 from the second-best year of the decade into the third-worst.