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Jore fire, 17 April 2025 Jore

Out · last detection 23 Apr 2025, 11:00 UTC

The fire started on 17 April 2025 in Jore, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,523 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 427th largest in Gambela since 2016 (of 611 with a page). Number 78 in Ethiopia in 2025, of 127.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,523ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
17 Apr 2025 – 23 Apr 2025
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
17 Apr
2025
Heat detections
117
in a single hotspot: 29 MW
Energy released
947MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Apr 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Apr23 Apr

How it evolved, day by day

181920212223

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

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 913 ha in 2017, 1,106 ha in 2018, 202 ha in 2019, 19 ha in 2020, 2,534 ha in 2021, 1,372 ha in 2022, 1,129 ha in 2023, 607 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,506 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Jore where it started
    2,539 ha reached on 18 Apr
    0.8 %

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.

Before · 10 Apr 2025
After · 30 Apr 2025

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 · Copernicus

On 22 April 2025 the air beside the fire reached 52 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 24: 1.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak52 µg/m³
Days over the guideline8 days
PM1066 µg/m³
Optical depth0.86
151617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 117Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Jore fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 17 April 2025 and 23 April 2025: 7 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 2,523 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Jore (2,539 ha, 0.8 %).
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.

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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.