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Akobo fire, 27 December 2017 Akobo

Out · last detection 3 Jan 2018, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 27 December 2017 in Akobo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,001 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 61th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 16 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 266.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pochalla · 2025Wantawo · 2022

Burnt area
9,001ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
27 Dec 2017 – 4 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Dec
2017
Heat detections
375
in a single hotspot: 89 MW
Danger at start
58
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
786MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Dec4 Jan
3 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

27 Dec 2017 · 26 MW · 2 28 Dec 2017 · 196 MW · 7 31 Dec 2017 · 4 MW · 1 1 Jan 2018 · 2,651 MW · 263 2 Jan 2018 · 1,829 MW · 99 3 Jan 2018 · 12 MW · 3
27 Dec 28 Dec 31 Dec 1 Jan 2 Jan 3 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
52km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 26 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,876 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (90 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

  1. Akobo where it started
    8,733 ha reached on 27 Dec
    4.1 %

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 area< 0.1 ha
Residents≈ 350

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.02 hectares of built-up land and about 350 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 Dec 37.7 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
28 Dec 38.7 °C 14 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 39.3 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
30 Dec 39.5 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
31 Dec 39.2 °C 10 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
1 Jan 37.4 °C 16 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
2 Jan 36.0 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
3 Jan 36.8 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
4 Jan 36.7 °C 17 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
5 Jan after 36.8 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
6 Jan after 36.7 °C 14 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 Jan after 37.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
8 Jan after 37.5 °C 11 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
9 Jan after 37.8 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
10 Jan after 38.8 °C 11 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
11 Jan after 39.3 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
12 Jan after 39.2 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
13 Jan after 39.2 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Jan after 39.5 °C 10 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 20 Dec 2017
After · 11 Jan 2018

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 · 375Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Akobo fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 27 December 2017 to 4 January 2018 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 December 2017 to 3 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,001 hectares (90.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Akobo (8,733 ha, 4.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.5 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, class Very extreme.
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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 3 January 2018 → 4 January 2018.
  2. Start date: 31 December 2017 → 27 December 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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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 31 December 2017 to 3 January 2018. 375 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.