How long did the Agalometi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 January 2016 to 13 February 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2016 to 6 February 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,880 hectares (138.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agalometi (10,547 ha, 6.0 %); Kamashi (3,422 ha, 2.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.

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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2016-01-25 → 2016-02-13

Agalometi fire, 25 January 2016 Agalometi, Kamashi

Out · last detection 13 Feb 2016, 11:45 UTC

The fire started on 25 January 2016 in Agalometi, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,880 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 14 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 322.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Agalometi · 2026 Agalometi · 2022 Agalometi · 2017 Yaso · 2019

Burnt area: 13,880ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 25 Jan 2016 – 13 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 25 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 394; in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Danger at start: 45; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 248MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jan13 Feb

Play back 13 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jan 29 Jan 2 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb 11 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

37°high

33km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 8.8% of the area of London (139 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Agalometi where it started

10,547 ha reached on 25 Jan

6.0 %
Kamashi

3,422 ha reached on 27 Jan

2.4 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015

Built-up area0.82 ha

Residents≈ 1,000

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.82 hectares of built-up land and about 1,000 residents (GHSL 2015, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
25 Jan	35.6 °C	14 %	29 km/h	Very high 45
26 Jan	35.1 °C	21 %	24 km/h	Very high 42
27 Jan	34.5 °C	20 %	33 km/h	Very high 46
28 Jan	33.7 °C	18 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
29 Jan	32.8 °C	17 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
30 Jan	34.2 °C	16 %	20 km/h	Very high 41
31 Jan	33.5 °C	19 %	27 km/h	Very high 44
1 Feb	35.5 °C	15 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
2 Feb	34.5 °C	15 %	26 km/h	Very high 43
3 Feb	36.1 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Very high 45
4 Feb	36.1 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Very high 45
5 Feb	36.0 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
6 Feb	36.1 °C	14 %	33 km/h	Very high 47
7 Feb	35.4 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
8 Feb	36.3 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Very high 48
9 Feb	37.4 °C	12 %	26 km/h	Very high 44
10 Feb	36.6 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
11 Feb	36.2 °C	13 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
12 Feb	36.1 °C	14 %	22 km/h	Very high 44
13 Feb	37.1 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Very high 47
14 Feb after	37.7 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
15 Feb after	38.0 °C	13 %	29 km/h	Very high 49
16 Feb after	37.3 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
17 Feb after	36.6 °C	14 %	27 km/h	Very high 47
18 Feb after	37.7 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Extreme 50
19 Feb after	38.8 °C	10 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
20 Feb after	38.7 °C	10 %	24 km/h	Very high 48
21 Feb after	38.4 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
22 Feb after	36.8 °C	13 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
23 Feb after	37.0 °C	15 %	26 km/h	Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

↔

Before · 18 Jan 2016

After · 20 Feb 2016

Before After

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 394Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.

⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.

Date and time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agalometi fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 January 2016 to 13 February 2016 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2016 to 6 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,880 hectares (138.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agalometi (10,547 ha, 6.0 %); Kamashi (3,422 ha, 2.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very high.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

RSS Changes to this page

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.

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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 January 2016 to 6 February 2016. 394 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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.

Where it burned