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 13 December 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 December 2017 to 13 December 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,633 hectares (106.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guba (8,921 ha, 1.3 %); Quara (1,786 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 31 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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2017-11-29 → 2017-12-13

Guba fire, 29 November 2017 Guba, Quara

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2017, 10:42 UTC

The fire started on 29 November 2017 in Guba, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,633 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 30th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 9 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 256.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quara · 2016 Guba · 2025 Guba · 2026 Quara · 2024

Burnt area: 10,633ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 29 Nov 2017 – 13 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; districts
Started on: 29 Nov; 2017
Heat detections: 294; in a single hotspot: 108 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 189MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Nov13 Dec

Play back 14 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 Nov 6 Dec 8 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 14 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

38°high

31km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 6,351 ha in 2016.

5,224 ha Quara fire, November 2016 28,159 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 6.7% of the area of London (106 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

8,921 ha reached on 5 Dec

1.3 %
Quara

1,786 ha reached on 29 Nov

0.2 %

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)
5 Dec	37.7 °C	14 %	24 km/h	Very high 44
6 Dec	37.3 °C	13 %	25 km/h	Very high 44
7 Dec	37.0 °C	13 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
8 Dec	37.1 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
9 Dec	37.6 °C	15 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
10 Dec	37.3 °C	12 %	22 km/h	Very high 47
11 Dec	37.9 °C	10 %	25 km/h	Very high 49
12 Dec	38.1 °C	11 %	24 km/h	Extreme 50
13 Dec	37.4 °C	10 %	27 km/h	Extreme 50
14 Dec after	36.5 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Very high 50
15 Dec after	35.9 °C	14 %	27 km/h	Very high 50
16 Dec after	36.9 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Extreme 50
17 Dec after	37.0 °C	13 %	24 km/h	Extreme 50
18 Dec after	37.6 °C	13 %	23 km/h	Extreme 51
19 Dec after	37.9 °C	13 %	21 km/h	Extreme 51
20 Dec after	38.1 °C	11 %	26 km/h	Very high 50
21 Dec after	38.3 °C	11 %	22 km/h	Extreme 51
22 Dec after	38.5 °C	9 %	23 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Dec after	37.8 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 22 Nov 2017

After · 20 Dec 2017

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 · 294Every 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 13 December 2017 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 December 2017 to 13 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,633 hectares (106.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Guba (8,921 ha, 1.3 %); Quara (1,786 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 31 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

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 December 2017 to 13 December 2017. 294 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