Ababo fire, 8 February 2024 Ababo, Baso Liben
The fire started on 8 February 2024 in Ababo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 223th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 72 in Ethiopia in 2024, of 87.
- Burnt area
- 2,138ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 8 Feb 2024 – 10 Feb 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 8 Feb
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 47
- in a single hotspot: 130 MW
- Energy released
- 657MW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2016, 1,701 ha in 2017, 852 ha in 2018, 992 ha in 2019, 605 ha in 2020, 1,852 ha in 2021, 556 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,084 ha that had burned before.
- 1,777 ha Baso Liben fire, January 2021 4,476 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 852 ha Baso Liben fire, December 2018 2,155 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 92 ha Ababo fire, January 2019 2,878 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 14 ha Ababo fire, January 2021 2,076 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Baso Liben fire, February 2016 2,153 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Ababo where it started1,998 ha reached on 7 Feb2.0 %
-
154 ha reached on 7 Feb0.1 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 9 February 2024 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 47Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Ababo fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 8 February 2024 and 10 February 2024: 3 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,138 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Ababo (1,998 ha, 2.0 %); Baso Liben (154 ha, 0.1 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Ethiopia (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.
Satellite cross-check
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.
Report an error
Where this data comes from
The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. 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 (Open Data Commons Open Database License 1.0). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.