Burned area
satellite only2,186ha
Perimeter published by GWIS (Copernicus).
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus)
- Date
- 3 Feb 2021 – 8 Feb 2021
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page to compare it with.
ET · Ethiopia · –
Kamashi fire, 3 February 2021 Gimbi, Kamashi
Out · last detection 8 Feb 2021, 10:40 UTC
The fire started on 3 February 2021 in Kamashi, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,186 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 533th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 635 with a page). Number 215 in Ethiopia in 2021, of 255.
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Use this data
Fire page data · version 2026-10-28matches the official recordwith caveatssatellite onlymodel
When copying, the sentence is
Tick the figures you want: they make up the lede and the CSV.
Duration by satellite
satellite only6days
3 Feb 2021 to 8 Feb 2021: first and last day with fire on the page.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- last detection: 8 Feb 2021, 10:40 UTC
+− cross-check
Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
Start
satellite only3 Feb 2021
First day with fire seen by the satellites or the perimeter.
- Source
- GWIS (Copernicus) · NASA FIRMS · VIIRS
- Date
- 3 Feb 2021
+− cross-check
No official record is matched to this page, so the alert time and the cause are not known here.
The worst day
satellite only104MW
Total radiative power on 6 February 2021; hotspots that day: 19.
- Source
- NASA FIRMS · VIIRS (FRP)
- Date
- 6 Feb 2021
+− cross-check
Fire radiative power (FRP) measures the energy the fire gives off when the satellite passes. Added up by day, it compares intensity, not area.
Danger at the start
model41.0FWI · very high
Fire Weather Index (Canadian system) computed by WorldFires for the day the fire started. Consecutive days without rain before: 60.
- Source
- WorldFires calculation (Canadian FWI system)
- Date
- 3 Feb 2021, local noon
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
This is an index computed from weather model data, not a measurement of the fire nor an official warning. Danger warnings are issued by each country’s authority. Emergency number and official warnings
Weather during the fire
model32.4°C · 13% RH
High of 32.4 °C and minimum humidity of 13% on 3 February 2021; gusts of 36 km/h on 5 February 2021.
- Source
- weather model at the fire’s grid cell
- Date
- 3 Feb 2021 – 8 Feb 2021
- Model
- ERA5 0,25° (ECMWF · Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com
+− cross-check
These are model values for a cell of about 25 km, not from a weather station: they may differ from what was measured on the ground.
Living inside
model≈ 300people
Estimated residents inside the perimeter and 0.51 ha of built-up area (100 m grid, epoch 2020).
- Source
- GHSL R2023A · JRC
- Date
- calculated on 24 October 2026
+− cross-check
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.
This page’s change log has been kept since 24 October 2026: every night what it publishes is compared and the difference is logged. Anything earlier is reconstructed from each source’s date and marked as reconstructed.
Show
-
· reconstructed weatherWeather and FWI computed from the ERA5 reanalysis
-
logName: Gimbi → Kamashi.
-
logName: Kamashi → Gimbi.
-
· reconstructed GHSLPopulation and built-up area computed
Area logged each night
Move the slider to see which area the page published each day.
Versioned permanent link
https://worldfires.org/en/fire/kamashi-2021-02-3?v=2026-10-28A version keeps the area, dates, name and official record; the area as it was logged (changes under 2% are not logged). The map, hotspots and weather always show today’s data.
Citation
A lede of about 60 words figures only, no adjectives
CSV for this fire kamashi-2021-02-3.csv · daily, no individual hotspots
| fecha | focos_viirs | frp_mw | tmax_c | tmin_c | hr_min_pct | viento_max_kmh | racha_max_kmh | precip_mm | fwi | clase_fwi | dentro_del_incendio |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021-02-03 | 2 | 4 | 32.4 | 15.9 | 13 | 9.1 | 21.2 | 0 | 41 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-04 | 3 | 12 | 31.4 | 17.6 | 15 | 9 | 27.7 | 0 | 41.2 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-05 | 34 | 55 | 30.5 | 17 | 15 | 13.7 | 36.4 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-06 | 19 | 104 | 29.7 | 16.1 | 13 | 10.7 | 30.6 | 0 | 43.4 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-07 | 11 | 27 | 30.6 | 17.5 | 13 | 7.9 | 24.8 | 0 | 40.9 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-08 | 5 | 76 | 32.3 | 17.2 | 16 | 8 | 24.5 | 0 | 41.3 | muy_alto | 1 |
| 2021-02-09 | 0 | 0 | 32 | 17.1 | 18 | 6.6 | 21.6 | 0 | 40.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-10 | 0 | 0 | 33.1 | 16 | 16 | 11.2 | 26.6 | 0 | 45 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-11 | 0 | 0 | 31.6 | 17.4 | 14 | 12.2 | 30.6 | 0 | 46.3 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-12 | 0 | 0 | 31.9 | 16.2 | 12 | 10.9 | 25.9 | 0 | 45.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-13 | 0 | 0 | 31.6 | 17.9 | 13 | 11.1 | 27.4 | 0 | 45.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-14 | 0 | 0 | 32.3 | 16.1 | 13 | 8.2 | 23.8 | 0 | 42.9 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-15 | 0 | 0 | 32.1 | 18.4 | 15 | 10.2 | 24.8 | 0 | 45.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-16 | 0 | 0 | 32.9 | 19.6 | 15 | 8.9 | 25.2 | 0 | 44.1 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-17 | 0 | 0 | 31.6 | 19.1 | 15 | 8.8 | 24.5 | 0 | 44.2 | muy_alto | 0 |
| 2021-02-18 | 0 | 0 | 30.8 | 17.9 | 17 | 8.2 | 23.4 | 0 | 42.7 | muy_alto | 0 |
It is generated in your browser from this page’s data: one file per fire, aggregated by day and without individual hotspots.
Live widget for your story
It updates itself while the fire is still active and links to this page. Free, with the attribution shown at the bottom.
Sources for this page: GWIS (Copernicus), NASA FIRMS (VIIRS), ERA5 (ECMWF/Copernicus C3S) · Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0), GHSL (JRC). Open-Meteo.com · How we build fire pages: methodology
- Burnt area
- 2,186ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 3 Feb 2021 – 8 Feb 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 3 Feb
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 74
- in a single hotspot: 0 MW
- Danger at start
- 41
- Very high · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 46MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
HOTSPOTS BY DAY
3 Feb8 Feb
8 Feb 2021
How it evolved, day by day
3 Feb
6 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
32°high
36km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.
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
-
1,237 ha1.3 %
-
Kamashi where it started962 ha0.7 %
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 2020Built-up area0.51 ha
Residents≈ 300
Inside the perimeter there were about 0.51 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
Started with Very dry air: 25 % of the area in Ethiopia 60 days without rain: 37 % of the area in Ethiopia
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 Feb | 32.4 °C | 13 % | 21 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 4 Feb | 31.4 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 5 Feb | 30.5 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 6 Feb | 29.7 °C | 13 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 7 Feb | 30.6 °C | 13 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Feb | 32.3 °C | 16 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Feb after | 32.0 °C | 18 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 10 Feb after | 33.1 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 11 Feb after | 31.6 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 12 Feb after | 31.9 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 13 Feb after | 31.6 °C | 13 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 14 Feb after | 32.3 °C | 13 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Feb after | 32.1 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 16 Feb after | 32.9 °C | 15 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Feb after | 31.6 °C | 15 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 18 Feb after | 30.8 °C | 17 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
Its twins: fires that started in the same weather
It started with an FWI of 41.0, a minimum humidity of 13% and more than two months without rain. Fires in the area that started in weather like this since 2016: 19.
FWI at the start
41.0
Minimum humidity
13 %
Days without rain
60+
this fire
chosen twins
rest of the area
Almost identicalSimilar
Outlines of the closest twins
This fire · Kamashi fire, 3 February 2021
2,186 ha
6 days
FWI 41.0
Min. humidity 13 %
Kiremu fire, January 2017
2,009 ha
10 days
FWI 42.0
Min. humidity 13 %
114 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Darimu fire, January 2017
3,459 ha
14 days
FWI 42.3
Min. humidity 13 %
105 km away, in 2017
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Limu fire, January 2019
2,262 ha
4 days
FWI 38.9
Min. humidity 13 %
68 km away, in 2019
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Bulen fire, February 2020
4,833 ha
12 days
FWI 41.4
Min. humidity 12 %
129 km away, in 2020
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
Bulen fire, February 2016
2,596 ha
3 days
FWI 39.3
Min. humidity 13 %
127 km away, in 2016
First rain (1 mm or more) after it ended: none in the following ten days.
What happened to them
- 10 days
- median duration
- 3,177 ha
- median area
- 11 %
- went past 10,000 ha
- —
- rain at the end (median; 0 of 19 had it)
It burned an area similar to its twins (2,186 ha against a median of 3,177 ha) and lasted 6 days, against 10 days.
In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.
This is a bank of analogues: it shows what usually happens, not what will happen. With fewer than 15 twins we give no figures. How we calculate it
How it ended
—first rain
—no rain in ten days
36km/h · max. gust
It was considered over on 8 Feb, and not even 1 mm fell in the following ten days: it went out without rain. None of its 19 twins had rain when they ended.
Weather on this page: Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
How a twin is chosen
- Same area: fires that have already ended, less than 250 km from this one, since 2016.
- Same start: we compare the FWI on the first day, the minimum humidity that day and the run of days without rain before it. The slider sets how much they may differ.
- Only pages with final weather data (ERA5 reanalysis) calculated in the same way as this fire’s; agricultural and grass burns and pages with data under review are left out.
- Fires burning at the same time as this one (a week before or after) are left out: they share the same spell of weather and do not count as a precedent.
- They are sorted by similarity, and the outlines of the first five are drawn.
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
↔
Before · 27 Jan 2021
After · 15 Feb 2021
Sentinel-2 did not pass over on that day. Try another date, or use false colour, which is daily.
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 · 0Every 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 time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kamashi fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 3 February 2021 and 8 February 2021: 6 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 2,186 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gimbi (1,237 ha, 1.3 %); Kamashi (962 ha, 0.7 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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.
- How did the fires that started in similar weather in this area end?
- Fires less than 250 km away that started since 2016 with a similar FWI, humidity and dry spell: 19. Their median duration was 10 days and their median area 3,177 ha; 11 % went past 10,000 ha. In none of them did 1 mm fall in the ten days after the end: they all went out without rain.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Name: Gimbi → Kamashi.
- Name: Kamashi → Gimbi.
RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version
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.
- Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2020, 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.