Assosa fire, 4 February 2022 Bambasi, Assosa
The fire started on 4 February 2022 in Assosa, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,888 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 193th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 696 with a page). Number 24 in Ethiopia in 2022, of 135.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,888ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 4 Feb 2022 – 14 Feb 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 4 Feb
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 131
- in a single hotspot: 56 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 112MW
- detected power per day, on average
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.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,238 ha in 2016, 3,745 ha in 2017, 2,020 ha in 2018, 2,347 ha in 2019, 2,819 ha in 2020, 3,667 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,904 ha that had burned before.
- 2,560 ha Assosa fire, January 2020 10,067 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,399 ha Bambasi fire, January 2016 15,723 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,347 ha Bambasi fire, January 2019 13,495 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,020 ha Bambasi fire, January 2018 2,243 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,905 ha Bambasi fire, January 2017 6,151 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,808 ha Assosa fire, January 2017 11,491 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 796 ha Bambasi fire, February 2016 11,124 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 162 ha Assosa fire, February 2020 2,156 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
3,096 ha reached on 6 Feb2.3 %
-
Assosa where it started816 ha reached on 4 Feb0.3 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6 Feb | 27.6 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 7 Feb | 27.9 °C | 21 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 8 Feb | 28.1 °C | 21 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 9 Feb | 28.8 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 10 Feb | 28.1 °C | 25 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 11 Feb | 28.7 °C | 22 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 12 Feb | 27.0 °C | 32 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 31 |
| 13 Feb | 29.1 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 31 |
| 14 Feb | 30.4 °C | 17 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 15 Feb after | 30.7 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 16 Feb after | 30.1 °C | 19 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 17 Feb after | 29.9 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 18 Feb after | 29.8 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 19 Feb after | 30.1 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
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.
Detections table · 131Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,495 haBambasi10 January 2019 · 22 days · 2 km away
- 15,723 haBambasiJanuary 2016 · 27 days · 3 km away
- 10,932 haBambasiFebruary 2021 · 9 days · 3 km away
- 11,124 haBambasiFebruary 2016 · 20 days · 6 km away
- 11,491 haAssosa7 January 2017 · 14 days · 8 km away
- 7,502 haBambasi22 January 2017 · 9 days · 14 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Assosa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2022 to 14 February 2022 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2022 to 9 February 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,888 hectares (38.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bambasi (3,096 ha, 2.3 %); Assosa (816 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 28.8 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 9 February 2022 → 14 February 2022.
- Start date: 6 February 2022 → 4 February 2022.
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
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 6 February 2022 to 9 February 2022. 131 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 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.