The fire that started in Piódão, in the municipality of Arganil (Coimbra district), and which was resolved on Sunday after 11 days, has a burned area of ​​64,451 hectares, according to the provisional national report from the ICNF's Forest Fire Information Management System (SGIF), which Lusa news agency had access to.

The report, with the latest burnt area update made on Sunday, confirms that this fire represents the largest burned area ever in Portugal since records began, surpassing the previous record set by the fire that started in Vilarinho, in the municipality of Lousã, in October 2017, which had reached 53,000 hectares.

The fire that started in Arganil also affected the municipalities of Pampilhosa da Serra and Oliveira do Hospital (Coimbra district), Seia (Guarda), and Castelo Branco, Fundão, and Covilhã (Castelo Branco).

This year, according to the SGIF report, approximately 250,000 hectares have already burned.

The fire that started in Freches, Trancoso, on the 9th, is estimated to have consumed 49,324 hectares and is the second largest this year and the third largest fire ever in Portugal.

The fire with the third largest burned area this year, according to the SGIF report consulted by Lusa, was the Sátão fire, with 13,769 hectares, which joined the Trancoso fire, forming a complex that affected 11 municipalities in the districts of Viseu and Guarda.

Freixo de Espada à Cinta (11,697 hectares), the two Sabugal fires (10,539 and 10,403 hectares), another fire in Trancoso that started on the 14th (8,673 hectares), Guarda (7,151 hectares), and Vila Real (6,007 hectares) are also on the list of the 10 largest fires this year, all of which occurred in August.

On the list of the 10 largest fires, there was only one fire in July, in Ponte da Barca (7,164 hectares), as can be seen in the report consulted by Lusa.

As of Sunday, there had been 80 large fires (over 100 hectares) in Portugal this year, accounting for 97% of the country's total burned area, the SGIF concluded.

According to the SGIF's provisional report, Guarda, Viseu, and Castelo Branco are the districts with the largest burned area.

Covilhã (20,257 hectares), Sabugal (18,726 hectares), and Trancoso (17,239 hectares) are the municipalities most affected by the fires in terms of burned area, followed by Sernancelhe, Mêda, Arganil, and Penedono, all municipalities with more than 10,000 hectares burned.

On Wednesday, Paulo Fernandes, a researcher at the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD), predicted that the Arganil fire could be the largest fire ever in Portugal, considering that it had the potential to become large.

The fire started early in the morning, caused by two lightning strikes, on a difficult-to-access ridge, and spread very quickly in the early hours, a fire expert and member of the technical committees analyzing the major fires of 2017 told Lusa.

The fire spread through difficult-to-access territory and in a region that burns continuously, with "an increasingly homogeneous continuum of vegetation" that contributed to the fire's progression, he explained.