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Kamashi fire, 24 January 2017 Kamashi, Bio Jiganifado

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2017, 11:31 UTC

The fire started on 24 January 2017 in Kamashi, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 15,873 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 12th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 699 with a page). Number 3 in Ethiopia in 2017, of 266.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bio Jiganifado · 2016Kamashi · 2016Kamashi · 2021Agalometi · 2022

Burnt area
15,873ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
24 Jan 2017 – 4 Feb 2017
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
24 Jan
2017
Heat detections
399
in a single hotspot: 323 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
285MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Jan4 Feb
5 Feb 2017

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jan 2017 · 255 MW · 41 25 Jan 2017 · 296 MW · 62 26 Jan 2017 · 348 MW · 41 27 Jan 2017 · 1,145 MW · 31 28 Jan 2017 · 291 MW · 64 29 Jan 2017 · 308 MW · 60 30 Jan 2017 · 658 MW · 49 31 Jan 2017 · 145 MW · 14 1 Feb 2017 · 62 MW · 11 2 Feb 2017 · 18 MW · 2 3 Feb 2017 · 27 MW · 4 4 Feb 2017 · 41 MW · 6 5 Feb 2017 · 117 MW · 7
24 Jan 26 Jan 27 Jan 28 Jan 30 Jan 1 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb

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
32km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

17% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,650 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 10% of the area of London (159 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

  1. Kamashi where it started
    15,926 ha reached on 24 Jan
    11 %
  2. Bio Jiganifado
    53 ha reached on 29 Jan
    0.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.42 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.42 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
24 Jan 35.9 °C 10 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Jan 35.7 °C 12 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jan 35.8 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
27 Jan 36.5 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Jan 36.1 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Jan 36.3 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Jan 34.4 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Jan 35.4 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
1 Feb 35.0 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
2 Feb 35.7 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
3 Feb 35.8 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Feb 34.7 °C 18 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
5 Feb after 35.1 °C 15 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Feb after 35.8 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Feb after 35.9 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Feb after 37.1 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Feb after 35.6 °C 20 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Feb after 37.7 °C 15 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Feb after 36.8 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
12 Feb after 36.8 °C 17 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Feb after 36.9 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
14 Feb after 30.0 °C 32 % 27 km/h 0.9 mm High 26
15 Feb after 34.4 °C 27 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
16 Feb after 34.3 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Feb after 34.0 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
18 Feb after 32.3 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
19 Feb after 32.9 °C 28 % 32 km/h 0.5 mm High 36
20 Feb after 35.6 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 17 Jan 2017
After · 11 Feb 2017

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 · 399Every 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 Kamashi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 24 January 2017 and 4 February 2017: 12 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 15,873 hectares (158.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kamashi (15,926 ha, 11 %); Bio Jiganifado (53 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.7 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, class Very high.
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 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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 399 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 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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.