Dangura fire, 3 January 2022 Dangura
The fire started on 3 January 2022 in Dangura, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,812 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 201th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 701 with a page). Number 30 in Ethiopia in 2022, of 135.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 3,812ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 3 Jan 2022 – 8 Jan 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 94
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 40
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 97MW
- 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 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,220 ha in 2016, 2,660 ha in 2017, 34 ha in 2018, 795 ha in 2019, 1,970 ha in 2020, 3,032 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,835 ha that had burned before.
- 3,032 ha Dangura fire, January 2021 11,398 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,199 ha Dangura fire, January 2017 5,436 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,970 ha Dangura fire, January 2020 9,415 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,202 ha Dangura fire, February 2016 89,959 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 597 ha Dangura fire, January 2019 3,586 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 461 ha Dangura fire, February 2017 2,518 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 34 ha Dangura fire, January 2018 2,826 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
-
Dangura where it started3,835 ha0.8 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.17 hectares of built-up land and about 70 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Jan | 31.0 °C | 15 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 4 Jan | 30.6 °C | 19 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 5 Jan | 32.5 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 6 Jan | 32.0 °C | 20 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 36 |
| 7 Jan | 34.4 °C | 18 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 8 Jan | 34.7 °C | 18 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 9 Jan after | 33.6 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 10 Jan after | 33.3 °C | 21 % | 20 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 37 |
| 11 Jan after | 32.9 °C | 23 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 12 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 20 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 13 Jan after | 34.0 °C | 18 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 14 Jan after | 34.3 °C | 15 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 15 Jan after | 33.4 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 16 Jan after | 35.2 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 17 Jan after | 33.1 °C | 21 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 18 Jan after | 29.9 °C | 22 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
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.
Detections table · 0Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 89,959 haDangura9 February 2016 · 34 days · 13 km away
- 91,996 haBulen25 January 2022 · 61 days · 30 km away
- 39,054 haDangura19 February 2017 · 18 days · 32 km away
- 125,093 haDangura22 January 2020 · 66 days · 33 km away
- 55,089 haMandura18 February 2024 · 23 days · 34 km away
- 14,961 haMandura3 March 2019 · 6 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dangura fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 January 2022 and 8 January 2022: 6 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 3,812 hectares (38.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Dangura (3,835 ha, 0.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 40, class Very 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.
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. No 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.
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.