Kafta Humera fire, November 2020 Kafta Humera
The fire started on 3 November 2020 in Kafta Humera, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,252 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 17th largest in Tigray since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 131 in Ethiopia in 2020, of 177.
- Burnt area
- 2,252ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 4days
- 3 Nov 2020 – 6 Nov 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Nov
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 49
- in a single hotspot: 55 MW
- Energy released
- 313MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,607 ha in 2016.
What happened to each town
-
Kafta Humera where it started2,267 ha reached on 3 Nov0.4 %
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.
Detections table · 49Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 3,024 haKafta HumeraNovember 2016 · 5 days · 2 km away
- 3,504 haKafta Humera12 December 2017 · 6 days · 13 km away
- 7,691 haOmhajerJanuary 2019 · 3 days · 15 km away
- 3,021 haKafta Humera 13 October 2026 · 11 days · 20 km away
- 8,430 haKafta HumeraDecember 2019 · 7 days · 25 km away
- 5,786 haOmhajer1 March 2020 · 3 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kafta Humera fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 November 2020 and 6 November 2020: 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 2,252 hectares (22.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kafta Humera (2,267 ha, 0.4 %).
- 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
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.