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Kiremu fire, January 2021 Amuru, Kiremu, Bure

Out · last detection 20 Jan 2021, 11:37 UTC

The fire started on 9 January 2021 in Kiremu, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,036 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 36 in Ethiopia in 2021, of 255.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Amuru · 2019Amuru · 2020Kiremu · 2017Wemberma · 2016

Burnt area
7,036ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
9 Jan 2021 – 19 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit
4
districts
Started on
9 Jan
2021
Heat detections
213
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
145MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Jan19 Jan
20 Jan 2021

How it evolved, day by day

9 Jan 2021 · 5 MW · 5 10 Jan 2021 · 13 MW · 3 12 Jan 2021 · 264 MW · 45 13 Jan 2021 · 345 MW · 64 14 Jan 2021 · 451 MW · 40 15 Jan 2021 · 178 MW · 45 16 Jan 2021 · 36 MW · 9 19 Jan 2021 · 3 MW · 1 20 Jan 2021 · 10 MW · 1
9 Jan 12 Jan 14 Jan 16 Jan 20 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

33°high
37km/h · peak gust
20%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

96% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,574 ha in 2016, 1,136 ha in 2017, 863 ha in 2018, 5,460 ha in 2019, 3,541 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 6,761 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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. Amuru
    4,998 ha reached on 12 Jan
    4.3 %
  2. Kiremu where it started
    1,511 ha reached on 9 Jan
    1.4 %
  3. Bure
    435 ha reached on 12 Jan
    0.5 %
  4. Wemberma
    141 ha
    0.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
12 Jan 31.4 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Jan 31.0 °C 25 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
14 Jan 31.3 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
15 Jan 31.9 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Jan 33.2 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
17 Jan 32.2 °C 22 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Jan 32.7 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
19 Jan 33.7 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
20 Jan after 33.2 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Jan after 33.1 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Jan after 33.4 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jan after 33.0 °C 22 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jan after 32.7 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.4 mm High 37
25 Jan after 33.2 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.3 mm High 38
26 Jan after 34.0 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jan 2021
After · 26 Jan 2021

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 · 213Every 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 Kiremu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 January 2021 to 19 January 2021 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 January 2021 to 16 January 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,036 hectares (70.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Amuru (4,998 ha, 4.3 %); Kiremu (1,511 ha, 1.4 %); Bure (435 ha, 0.5 %); Wemberma (141 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 33.2 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 16 January 2021 → 19 January 2021.
  2. Start date: 12 January 2021 → 9 January 2021.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 January 2021 to 16 January 2021. 213 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.

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.