How long did the Guba fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 November 2017 to 25 December 2017 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2017 to 19 December 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,455 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Guba (2,473 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2017-11-29 → 2017-12-25

Guba fire, 29 November 2017 Guba

Out · last detection 25 Dec 2017, 10:36 UTC

The fire started on 29 November 2017 in Guba, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,455 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 484th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 190 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 256.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Guba · 2026 Guba · 2025 Guba · 2019 Quara · 2016

Burnt area: 2,455ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 27days; 29 Nov 2017 – 25 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 29 Nov; 2017
Heat detections: 99; in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start: 42; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 52MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Nov25 Dec

Play back 25 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 Nov 6 Dec 9 Dec 14 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 20 Dec 25 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

32km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

2% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 39 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

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

Guba where it started

2,473 ha reached on 29 Nov

0.4 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
6 Dec	36.2 °C	15 %	28 km/h	Very high 42
7 Dec	35.9 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Very high 45
8 Dec	36.1 °C	15 %	27 km/h	Very high 42
9 Dec	36.8 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Very high 43
10 Dec	36.6 °C	14 %	23 km/h	Very high 43
11 Dec	36.9 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Very high 44
12 Dec	37.4 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Very high 46
13 Dec	36.6 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Very high 46
14 Dec	35.6 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Very high 48
15 Dec	34.9 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Very high 47
16 Dec	36.1 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Very high 49
17 Dec	36.3 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
18 Dec	36.7 °C	15 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
19 Dec	37.0 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 44
20 Dec	37.2 °C	13 %	24 km/h	Very high 46
21 Dec	37.5 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
22 Dec	37.8 °C	10 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
23 Dec	37.0 °C	9 %	27 km/h	Extreme 50
24 Dec	37.1 °C	8 %	26 km/h	Extreme 52
25 Dec	35.5 °C	8 %	32 km/h	Extreme 55
26 Dec after	35.7 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Dec after	36.3 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
28 Dec after	36.5 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 56
29 Dec after	36.0 °C	12 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Nov 2017

After · 1 Jan 2018

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 · 99Every 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 Guba fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 November 2017 to 25 December 2017 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 December 2017 to 19 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,455 hectares (24.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Guba (2,473 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

RSS Changes to this page

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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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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 December 2017 to 19 December 2017. 99 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