How long did the Dangura fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2016 and 11 March 2016: 8 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 2,786 hectares (27.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Dangura (2,806 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.

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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2016-03-04 → 2016-03-11

Dangura fire, 4 March 2016 Dangura

Out · last detection 12 Mar 2016, 11:20 UTC

The fire started on 4 March 2016 in Dangura, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,786 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 386th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 176 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 309.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guba · 2026 Guba · 2025 Guba · 2019 Dangura · 2020

Burnt area: 2,786ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 4 Mar 2016 – 11 Mar 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 4 Mar; 2016
Heat detections: 107; in a single hotspot: 63 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 79MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Mar11 Mar

Play back 12 Mar 2016

How it evolved, day by day

4 Mar 6 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 12 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

41°high

40km/h · peak gust

4%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (28 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

Dangura where it started

2,806 ha reached on 26 Feb

0.6 %

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.

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)
4 Mar	40.2 °C	7 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
5 Mar	39.7 °C	7 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
6 Mar	39.6 °C	10 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 64
7 Mar	38.8 °C	7 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 68
8 Mar	39.0 °C	5 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 66
9 Mar	40.5 °C	4 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 65
10 Mar	39.1 °C	5 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
11 Mar	41.0 °C	6 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
12 Mar after	41.0 °C	11 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
13 Mar after	39.2 °C	16 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
14 Mar after	37.2 °C	21 %	51 km/h	0.8 mm	Very high 50
15 Mar after	38.6 °C	19 %	27 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 42
16 Mar after	38.2 °C	19 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
17 Mar after	37.2 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
18 Mar after	36.3 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.7 mm	Very high 46
19 Mar after	37.2 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
20 Mar after	39.4 °C	14 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
21 Mar after	38.7 °C	7 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Feb 2016

After · 18 Mar 2016

Before After

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 · 107Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dangura fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 March 2016 and 11 March 2016: 8 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 2,786 hectares (27.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Dangura (2,806 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 41.0 °C, humidity dropped to 4 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 68, class Extreme.
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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. 107 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.

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.

Where it burned