Kafta Humera fire, 22 October 2025 Kafta Humera
The fire started on 22 October 2025 in Kafta Humera, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,475 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 13th largest in Tigray since 2016 (of 21 with a page). Number 83 in Ethiopia in 2025, of 127.
- Burnt area
- 2,475ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 22 Oct 2025 – 29 Oct 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Oct
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 37
- in a single hotspot: 138 MW
- Energy released
- 400MW
- 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
29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 122 ha in 2016, 329 ha in 2019, 355 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 706 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
Kafta Humera where it started2,493 ha reached on 16 Oct0.4 %
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 27 October 2025 the air beside the fire reached 34 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.6 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 · 37Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,002 haKafta Humera16 November 2021 · 5 days · 19 km away
- 7,691 haOmhajerJanuary 2019 · 3 days · 25 km away
- 3,504 haKafta Humera12 December 2017 · 6 days · 29 km away
- 5,786 haOmhajer1 March 2020 · 3 days · 32 km away
- 3,024 haKafta HumeraNovember 2016 · 5 days · 34 km away
- 3,092 haKafta Humera23 December 2017 · 5 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kafta Humera fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 October 2025 and 29 October 2025: 8 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 2,475 hectares (24.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kafta Humera (2,493 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.