Skip to content
worldfires
en
ET · Ethiopia · →

Dangura fire, March 2018 Mandura, Dibat, Dangura

Out · last detection 17 Mar 2018, 11:38 UTC

The fire started on 1 March 2018 in Dangura, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 55,315 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). The largest in Ethiopia in 2018, of 102.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mandura · 2021Mandura · 2024Dangura · 2017Dangura · 2025

Burnt area
55,315ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
1 Mar 2018 – 17 Mar 2018
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
1 Mar
2018
Heat detections
2,264
in a single hotspot: 259 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
1.6GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 1 Mar17 Mar
17 Mar 2018

How it evolved, day by day

1 Mar 2018 · 155 MW · 11 2 Mar 2018 · 38 MW · 12 3 Mar 2018 · 342 MW · 59 4 Mar 2018 · 1,385 MW · 95 5 Mar 2018 · 2,685 MW · 274 6 Mar 2018 · 1,627 MW · 268 7 Mar 2018 · 7,614 MW · 594 8 Mar 2018 · 7,871 MW · 517 9 Mar 2018 · 2,379 MW · 238 10 Mar 2018 · 2,296 MW · 73 11 Mar 2018 · 310 MW · 46 12 Mar 2018 · 209 MW · 22 13 Mar 2018 · 251 MW · 12 14 Mar 2018 · 60 MW · 11 15 Mar 2018 · 185 MW · 15 16 Mar 2018 · 82 MW · 7 17 Mar 2018 · 96 MW · 10
1 Mar 4 Mar 7 Mar 8 Mar 10 Mar 13 Mar 16 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

37°high
35km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 34,056 ha in 2016, 31,050 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 44,274 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 35% of the area of London (553 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. Mandura
    43,644 ha reached on 5 Mar
    40 %
  2. Dibat
    5,499 ha reached on 5 Mar
    2.4 %
  3. Dangura where it started
    3,263 ha reached on 1 Mar
    0.6 %
  4. Bulen
    3,250 ha reached on 3 Mar
    1.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area2.9 ha
Residents≈ 3,900

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.9 hectares of built-up land and about 3,900 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
1 Mar 34.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Mar 33.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Mar 33.5 °C 9 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
4 Mar 33.4 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
5 Mar 34.1 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Mar 35.3 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Mar 37.1 °C 11 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
8 Mar 36.1 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Mar 37.3 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Mar 37.3 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Mar 36.5 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Mar 35.2 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Mar 35.2 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Mar 35.9 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Mar 36.3 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Mar 35.7 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Mar 35.2 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
18 Mar after 35.6 °C 10 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Mar after 35.7 °C 8 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
20 Mar after 36.4 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
21 Mar after 37.2 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Mar after 35.2 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Mar after 35.2 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
24 Mar after 36.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Mar after 36.4 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Mar after 35.4 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 39
27 Mar after 35.2 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Feb 2018
After · 24 Mar 2018

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 · 2,264Every 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 Dangura fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 1 March 2018 to 17 March 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 March 2018 to 10 March 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 55,315 hectares (553.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Mandura (43,644 ha, 40 %); Dibat (5,499 ha, 2.4 %); Dangura (3,263 ha, 0.6 %); Bulen (3,250 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 10 March 2018 → 17 March 2018.
  2. Start date: 5 March 2018 → 1 March 2018.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 5 March 2018 to 10 March 2018. 2,264 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 2020, 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.