How long did the Agalometi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 January 2017 to 10 February 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 January 2017 to 4 February 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,791 hectares (97.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agalometi (7,910 ha, 4.5 %); Kamashi (1,943 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2017-01-27 → 2017-02-10

Agalometi fire, 27 January 2017 Agalometi, Kamashi

Out · last detection 11 Feb 2017, 11:19 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2017 in Agalometi, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,791 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 38th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 11 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 266.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Agalometi · 2016 Kamashi · 2016 Agalometi · 2026 Agalometi · 2022

Burnt area: 9,791ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 27 Jan 2017 – 10 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 27 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 269; in a single hotspot: 104 MW
Danger at start: 48; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 227MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan10 Feb

Play back 11 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Jan 29 Jan 31 Jan 1 Feb 2 Feb 4 Feb 8 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

38°high

34km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,984 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,678 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.2% of the area of London (98 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

7,910 ha reached on 27 Jan

4.5 %
Kamashi

1,943 ha reached on 27 Jan

1.3 %

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 area0.51 ha

Residents≈ 700

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.51 hectares of built-up land and about 700 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	Rain	Danger (FWI)
27 Jan	35.9 °C	15 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
28 Jan	35.6 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Jan	35.8 °C	19 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
30 Jan	33.9 °C	19 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
31 Jan	34.7 °C	16 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
1 Feb	34.2 °C	16 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
2 Feb	34.9 °C	18 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
3 Feb	34.8 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
4 Feb	34.2 °C	19 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Feb	34.7 °C	14 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
6 Feb	35.6 °C	15 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
7 Feb	35.7 °C	18 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
8 Feb	37.0 °C	18 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
9 Feb	35.6 °C	18 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
10 Feb	37.6 °C	15 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
11 Feb after	36.4 °C	18 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
12 Feb after	36.4 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
13 Feb after	36.9 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
14 Feb after	30.3 °C	32 %	30 km/h	0.7 mm	High 28
15 Feb after	34.0 °C	26 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
16 Feb after	34.0 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.9 mm	High 32
17 Feb after	33.3 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
18 Feb after	31.0 °C	20 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
19 Feb after	31.5 °C	29 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Feb after	35.1 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 20 Jan 2017

After · 17 Feb 2017

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 · 269Every 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 27 January 2017 to 10 February 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 January 2017 to 4 February 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,791 hectares (97.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agalometi (7,910 ha, 4.5 %); Kamashi (1,943 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 4 February 2017 → 10 February 2017.
27 October 2026 Start date: 30 January 2017 → 27 January 2017.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 January 2017 to 4 February 2017. 269 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