Bure fire, October 2026 Bure, Amuru
The fire started on 31 October 2026 in Bure, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,482 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 117th largest in Amhara since 2016 (of 173 with a page). Number 124 in Ethiopia in 2026, of 194.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Bure · 2025Bure · 2021Bure · 2023Bure · 2018
Is it still active?
No detections since 3 Nov 2026, 22:46 UTC. That usually means no flame is visible from space any more, although hotspots may remain. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 2,482ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 31 Oct 2026 – 3 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 31 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 36
- in a single hotspot: 30 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 75MW
- 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 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,255 ha in 2016, 838 ha in 2017, 549 ha in 2018, 856 ha in 2019, 1,429 ha in 2020, 1,173 ha in 2021, 905 ha in 2022, 779 ha in 2023, 109 ha in 2024, 1,801 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,149 ha that had burned before.
- 1,722 ha Bure fire, November 2025 3,268 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,076 ha Bure fire, December 2021 2,393 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 779 ha Bure fire, January 2023 2,149 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 545 ha Bure fire, December 2018 2,362 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 439 ha Bure fire, December 2020 3,059 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 50 ha Amuru fire, March 2021 4,313 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 47 ha Kiremu fire, January 2021 7,036 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 34 ha Bure fire, January 2022 2,506 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
-
Bure where it started2,468 ha reached on 31 Oct3.1 %
-
28 ha0.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 31 Oct | 31.1 °C | 23 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 1 Nov | 31.3 °C | 20 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 26 |
| 2 Nov | 31.5 °C | 18 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 3 Nov | 32.1 °C | 19 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
| 4 Nov after | 32.0 °C | 17 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 1 November 2026 the air beside the fire reached 51 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 34: 2.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 36Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 10,555 haDembechaDecember 2018 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 8,418 haBureNovember 2017 · 15 days · 19 km away
- 7,742 haBure26 January 2022 · 3 days · 21 km away
- 9,701 haBureDecember 2016 · 12 days · 25 km away
- 13,228 haWembermaJanuary 2016 · 18 days · 28 km away
- 8,938 haYaso24 January 2021 · 11 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Bure fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 31 October 2026 and 3 November 2026: 4 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 2,482 hectares (24.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Bure (2,468 ha, 3.1 %); Amuru (28 ha, 0.0 %).
- Is the Bure fire still active?
- No fire detections since 3 Nov 2026, 22:46 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.1 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 28, 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 3 November 2026.
- Area: 2,142 → 2,482 ha.
- Page published (2,142 ha).
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 36 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 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.