Dima fire, 27 January 2026 Dima
The fire started on 27 January 2026 in Dima, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,020 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 605th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 182 in Ethiopia in 2026, of 190.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Dima · 2016Gog · 2020Dima · 2018Dima · 2019
- Burnt area
- 2,020ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 27 Jan 2026 – 30 Jan 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 27 Jan
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 53
- in a single hotspot: 45 MW
- Average daily power
- 146MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
27 Jan 2026 · 146 MW · 12
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,214 ha in 2016, 1,063 ha in 2018, 963 ha in 2019, 1,679 ha in 2020, 707 ha in 2021, 271 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,027 ha that had burned before.
- 1,344 ha Dima fire, January 2016 2,058 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,220 ha Gog fire, February 2020 13,679 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,063 ha Dima fire, January 2018 9,823 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 963 ha Dima fire, January 2019 26,386 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 683 ha Dima fire, February 2021 2,252 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 250 ha Dima fire, February 2023 4,159 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 66 ha Gog fire, January 2016 2,940 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 24 ha Dima fire, January 2021 2,760 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
-
Dima where it started2,036 ha reached on 26 Jan0.3 %
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.
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 27 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 86 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 58: 3.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 53Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Dima fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 27 January 2026 and 30 January 2026: 4 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 2,020 hectares (20.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Dima (2,036 ha, 0.3 %).
- 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
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. 53 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.