Fires are sweeping across areas of two neighbouring municipalities on the west coast, Calheta and Porto Moniz, burning in hard-to-reach areas amid unseasonably high temperatures expected to top 30 degrees Celsius (86°F) on Friday.
The Civil Protection authority on Friday morning located the missing tourists. They had fled to a cave in a mountainous part of Porto Moniz and an operation to rescue them from the area was under way, it said on social media.
"It was a complicated night, a difficult night," Civil Protection secretary of state Patricia Gaspar told public broadcaster RTP at Lisbon's military airport. "The fires are still ongoing."
The whole coastline of Madeira - an autonomous region of Portugal home to around 250,000 people and a popular tourist destination - has been placed on orange alert, the second highest level, until Saturday.
A third fire was reported on Friday in a forested area in the municipality of Camara de Lobos, west of the island's capital Funchal.
In Calheta, a blaze that started on Wednesday has burned across 70 square kilometres, more than half of the municipality's area, according to mayor Carlos Teles. A care home and a health centre were evacuated on Thursday as a precaution, while 120 guests were moved from a hotel.
A few houses have been destroyed in Calheta and Porto Moniz, but no serious injuries reported so far, authorities said.
Porto Moniz mayor Emanuel Camara told RTP it was a "night to forget" and that "many people" were evacuated as a precaution. He said the wildfire had lost intensity but was not under control.
Gaspar said firefighters from the mainland would remain on Madeira for as long as needed, as a military plane carrying 64 departed for the island to join the more than 100 local firefighters already on the ground.
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