Jikawo fire, 3 March 2024 Jikawo
The fire started on 3 March 2024 in Jikawo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,262 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 124th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 10 in Ethiopia in 2024, of 87.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Jikawo · 2023Jikawo · 2020Jikawo · 2018Jore · 2022
- Burnt area
- 5,262ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 17days
- 3 Mar 2024 – 19 Mar 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Mar
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 198
- in a single hotspot: 98 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 235MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 458 ha in 2017, 1,211 ha in 2018, 3,185 ha in 2020, 2,753 ha in 2021, 1,910 ha in 2022, 3,663 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,790 ha that had burned before.
- 2,240 ha Jikawo fire, February 2023 3,178 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,822 ha Jikawo fire, March 2020 4,436 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,211 ha Jikawo fire, December 2018 3,849 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,129 ha Jore fire, January 2022 201,499 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 25 ha Jikawo fire, February 2023 3,678 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
-
Jikawo where it started5,294 ha reached on 3 Mar4.8 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.01 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Mar | 42.5 °C | 5 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 4 Mar | 42.6 °C | 7 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 5 Mar | 41.3 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 6 Mar | 39.0 °C | 16 % | 31 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 7 Mar | 39.5 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 8 Mar | 41.2 °C | 7 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 9 Mar | 41.8 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 10 Mar | 41.3 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 11 Mar | 41.9 °C | 16 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Mar | 42.1 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 13 Mar | 42.9 °C | 17 % | 42 km/h | 1.2 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 14 Mar | 42.5 °C | 17 % | 44 km/h | 0.2 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 15 Mar | 41.9 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Mar | 40.8 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 17 Mar | 41.3 °C | 20 % | 25 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 47 |
| 18 Mar | 42.1 °C | 18 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 19 Mar | 39.7 °C | 23 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 20 Mar after | 40.5 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Mar after | 40.1 °C | 23 % | 22 km/h | 0.7 mm | Very high 42 |
| 22 Mar after | 39.8 °C | 22 % | 33 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 45 |
| 23 Mar after | 41.3 °C | 19 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 24 Mar after | 42.2 °C | 15 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 25 Mar after | 40.6 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 26 Mar after | 41.0 °C | 16 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 27 Mar after | 41.0 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 28 Mar after | 40.7 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 50 |
| 29 Mar after | 40.7 °C | 20 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
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 3 March 2024 the air beside the fire reached 131 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 65: 4.3 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 · 198Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 25,208 haJikawo17 February 2025 · 36 days · 3 km away
- 49,326 haJikawo2 February 2026 · 43 days · 7 km away
- 33,633 haJore6 March 2018 · 18 days · 12 km away
- 48,009 haWantawo2 March 2022 · 21 days · 33 km away
- 25,474 haLuakpiny/NasirFebruary 2021 · 14 days · 35 km away
- 22,025 haGambella Wild Life Reserve29 March 2021 · 22 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Jikawo fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 March 2024 to 19 March 2024 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 March 2024 to 13 March 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,262 hectares (52.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Jikawo (5,294 ha, 4.8 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 42.9 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, 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.
- Last day with fire: 13 March 2024 → 19 March 2024.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
- Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 3 March 2024 to 13 March 2024. 198 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.
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.