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ET · Ethiopia · →

Bulen fire, 4 March 2021 Bulen

Out · last detection 8 Mar 2021, 10:16 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2021 in Bulen, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,177 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 597th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 217 in Ethiopia in 2021, of 255.

Burnt area
2,177ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
4 Mar 2021 – 8 Mar 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
4 Mar
2021
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Energy released
685MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

8 Mar 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar8 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

45678

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

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 209 ha in 2016, 900 ha in 2017, 1,751 ha in 2019, 926 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,928 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Bulen where it started
    2,189 ha reached on 3 Mar
    0.7 %

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.

Before · 25 Feb 2021
After · 15 Mar 2021

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 · 58Every 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 Bulen fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2021 and 8 March 2021: 5 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 2,177 hectares (21.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bulen (2,189 ha, 0.7 %).
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.

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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.