Skip to content
worldfires
ET · Ethiopia · –

Dangura fire, 5 January 2026 Dangura, Guba

Out · last detection 20 Jan 2026, 11:06 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2026 in Dangura, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,470 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 130 in Ethiopia in 2026, of 201.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

The power measured by the satellite is low (19.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…
Burnt area
2,470ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
16days
5 Jan 2026 – 20 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
5 Jan
2026
Heat detections
40
in a single hotspot: 20 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
17MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan20 Jan
20 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jan 2026 · 27 MW · 3 6 Jan 2026 · 1 MW · 1 9 Jan 2026 · 11 MW · 3 10 Jan 2026 · 21 MW · 6 11 Jan 2026 · 29 MW · 9 12 Jan 2026 · 7 MW · 2 13 Jan 2026 · 58 MW · 8 14 Jan 2026 · 21 MW · 4 15 Jan 2026 · 4 MW · 1 19 Jan 2026 · 5 MW · 2 20 Jan 2026 · 5 MW · 1
5 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 19 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
32km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

14% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 95 ha in 2021, 145 ha in 2022, 121 ha in 2023.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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. Dangura where it started
    2,105 ha reached on 5 Jan
    0.4 %
  2. 380 ha reached on 6 Jan
    0.0 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 37 % of the area in Ethiopia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Jan 33.8 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Jan 34.2 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
7 Jan 33.5 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Jan 36.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Jan 34.8 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Jan 33.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jan 34.1 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Jan 35.6 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Jan 34.3 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan 34.7 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
15 Jan 34.4 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jan 33.1 °C 22 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jan 34.2 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jan 35.7 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Jan 34.9 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Jan 37.6 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Jan after 37.6 °C 14 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
22 Jan after 36.6 °C 14 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Jan after 36.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Jan after 36.9 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
25 Jan after 37.0 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
26 Jan after 36.5 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
27 Jan after 36.3 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
28 Jan after 36.2 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
29 Jan after 35.4 °C 13 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
30 Jan after 36.7 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2025
After · 27 Jan 2026

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 32 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak32 µg/m³
Days over the guideline6 days
PM1038 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
7 Jan10 Jan13 Jan16 Jan
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 40Every 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 5 January 2026 to 20 January 2026 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 9 January 2026 to 15 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,470 hectares (24.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dangura (2,105 ha, 0.4 %); Guba (380 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.6 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 32 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: 15 January 2026 → 20 January 2026.
  2. Start date: 9 January 2026 → 5 January 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 9 January 2026 to 15 January 2026. 40 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 2025, 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.