How long did the Dima fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 January 2016 and 15 January 2016: 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 12,079 hectares (120.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Dima (12,166 ha, 1.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2016-01-10 → 2016-01-15

Dima fire, 10 January 2016 Dima

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2016, 10:49 UTC

The fire started on 10 January 2016 in Dima, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,079 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 39th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 15 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 309.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dima · 2023 Dima · 2018 Dima · 2019 Dima · 2019

Burnt area: 12,079ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 6days; 10 Jan 2016 – 15 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 10 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 337; in a single hotspot: 232 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 770MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Jan15 Jan

Play back 15 Jan 2016

How it evolved, day by day

10 Jan 11 Jan 12 Jan 13 Jan 14 Jan 15 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

39°high

32km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days 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 7.6% of the area of London (121 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

Dima where it started

12,166 ha reached on 8 Jan

1.6 %

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)
8 Jan	38.2 °C	26 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
9 Jan	38.3 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 30
10 Jan	38.6 °C	18 %	18 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
11 Jan	38.5 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
12 Jan	37.9 °C	28 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
13 Jan	37.1 °C	24 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
14 Jan	38.0 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
15 Jan	35.8 °C	31 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
16 Jan after	36.5 °C	32 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
17 Jan after	37.5 °C	26 %	17 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
18 Jan after	38.1 °C	19 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Jan after	37.7 °C	21 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
20 Jan after	37.6 °C	19 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
21 Jan after	36.8 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
22 Jan after	36.3 °C	30 %	20 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
23 Jan after	39.2 °C	19 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Jan after	37.8 °C	20 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
25 Jan after	37.6 °C	15 %	24 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 · 3 Jan 2016

After · 22 Jan 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 · 337Every 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 Dima fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 January 2016 and 15 January 2016: 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 12,079 hectares (120.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Dima (12,166 ha, 1.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.6 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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

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.

Report an error

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 337 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