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ET · Ethiopia · –

Dangura fire, 25 January 2026 Dangura

Out · last detection 27 Jan 2026, 10:35 UTC

The fire started on 25 January 2026 in Dangura, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,316 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

Number 154 in Ethiopia in 2026, of 209.

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 (28.3 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,316ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
25 Jan 2026 – 3 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
25 Jan
2026
Heat detections
45
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
123MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jan3 Feb
27 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jan 2026 · 108 MW · 18 26 Jan 2026 · 230 MW · 23 27 Jan 2026 · 32 MW · 4
25 Jan 26 Jan 27 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

36°high
35km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,622 ha in 2016, 1,819 ha in 2017, 1,523 ha in 2019, 1,237 ha in 2020, 763 ha in 2021, 2,095 ha in 2022, 438 ha in 2023, 331 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,272 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (23 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
    2,330 ha reached on 25 Jan
    0.5 %

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 Very dry air: 26 % of the area in Ethiopia 60 days without rain: 37 % of the area in Ethiopia

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
25 Jan 35.2 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Jan 34.8 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Jan 34.8 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Jan 34.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Jan 33.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Jan 35.4 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Jan 35.7 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Feb 36.1 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
2 Feb 33.7 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
3 Feb 35.3 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Feb after 35.2 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
5 Feb after 34.0 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Feb after 35.6 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Feb after 34.4 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Feb after 36.1 °C 12 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Feb after 36.5 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Feb after 36.2 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Feb after 34.8 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Feb after 34.4 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Feb after 37.1 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Jan 2026
After · 10 Feb 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 31 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 25 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 18: 1.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak25 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1030 µg/m³
Optical depth0.42
23 Jan25 Jan27 Jan29 Jan31 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 · 45Every 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 25 January 2026 to 3 February 2026 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 January 2026 to 29 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,316 hectares (23.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dangura (2,330 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.1 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 29 January 2026 → 3 February 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.

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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 25 January 2026 to 29 January 2026. 45 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.