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Dabo Hana fire, January 2017 Dabo Hana, Jimma Arjo

Out · last detection 4 Feb 2017, 10:10 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2017 in Dabo Hana, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,169 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 104th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 128 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 256.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Leka Dulecha · 2026Leka Dulecha · 2023Leka Dulecha · 2021Jimma Arjo · 2022

Burnt area
3,169ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
19days
17 Jan 2017 – 4 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
17 Jan
2017
Heat detections
94
in a single hotspot: 100 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
78MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan4 Feb
4 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jan 2017 · 13 MW · 2 23 Jan 2017 · 1 MW · 2 24 Jan 2017 · 4 MW · 3 25 Jan 2017 · 56 MW · 5 26 Jan 2017 · 614 MW · 49 27 Jan 2017 · 63 MW · 8 28 Jan 2017 · 57 MW · 11 29 Jan 2017 · 22 MW · 3 30 Jan 2017 · 58 MW · 4 31 Jan 2017 · 39 MW · 4 2 Feb 2017 · 5 MW · 1 4 Feb 2017 · 12 MW · 2
22 Jan 24 Jan 26 Jan 28 Jan 30 Jan 2 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
31km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 56 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 6 Feb.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2% of the area of London (32 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. Dabo Hana where it started
    2,078 ha reached on 22 Jan
    2.3 %
  2. Jimma Arjo
    1,111 ha reached on 24 Jan
    1.4 %

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 area0.15 ha
Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.15 hectares of built-up land and about 100 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)
24 Jan 31.6 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
25 Jan 31.1 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
26 Jan 31.2 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
27 Jan 32.2 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Jan 31.7 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
29 Jan 31.9 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Jan 31.2 °C 23 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Jan 31.7 °C 23 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Feb 32.2 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Feb 31.5 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Feb 32.1 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Feb 29.7 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
5 Feb after 30.3 °C 27 % 24 km/h 0.6 mm High 27
6 Feb after 32.0 °C 29 % 24 km/h 1.0 mm High 23

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 10 Jan 2017
After · 11 Feb 2017

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 · 94Every 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 Dabo Hana fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 January 2017 to 4 February 2017 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 January 2017 to 29 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,169 hectares (31.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dabo Hana (2,078 ha, 2.3 %); Jimma Arjo (1,111 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.2 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 31 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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 24 January 2017 to 29 January 2017. 94 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.