Covilhã is the municipality with the largest burned area in mainland Portugal between 2020 and 2025, according to the report by the National Statistics Institute. The mountain municipality lost 28.8 thousand hectares of forest and scrubland, followed by Sabugal with 22.6 thousand hectares and Sernancelhe with 19.5 thousand hectares. The ten most affected municipalities are located exclusively in the North and Centre regions, which together accounted for 90.7 percent of all surface consumed by fire in the country.
Over the five-year period analyzed, authorities counted 50,218 fire outbreaks across the national territory. Thirty-one percent of all incidents started in areas classified with high and very high hazard levels. The recurrence of flames proved particularly severe in the North region, where municipalities such as Arcos de Valdevez, Baião, Chaves, Cinfães, Ponte da Barca, Sernancelhe and Vila Real each recorded more than a thousand hectares burned repeatedly.
The report also identified problems with response times for emergency services. Approximately 69.6 percent of zones with high or very high hazard are located more than 15 minutes away from the nearest fire station, which worsens the vulnerability of rural populations in the interior. The municipalities of Góis and Pampilhosa da Serra present the most critical situation, with more than 80 percent of their surface in this range of difficult operational coverage, leading experts to recommend a reinforcement of active prevention resources and preventive forest management in these more isolated areas of the country.
