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ET · Ethiopia · →

Cheta fire, January 2021 Cheta

Out · last detection 1 Feb 2021, 23:48 UTC

The fire started on 27 January 2021 in Cheta, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,262 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 143th largest in SNNPR since 2016 (of 186 with a page). Number 206 in Ethiopia in 2021, of 255.

Burnt area
2,262ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
27 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
27 Jan
2021
Heat detections
81
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Energy released
645MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

1 Feb 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 27 Jan31 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

27282930311

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

This area had burned before

95% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,655 ha in 2016, 786 ha in 2017, 973 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,150 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Cheta where it started
    2,276 ha reached on 27 Jan
    3.4 %

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 · 20 Jan 2021
After · 7 Feb 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 · 81Every 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 Cheta fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 January 2021 and 31 January 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 2,262 hectares (22.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Cheta (2,276 ha, 3.4 %).
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.