How long did the Metu Zuria fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2016 to 14 January 2017 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 December 2016 to 8 January 2017.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,128 hectares (111.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 4 municipalities: Darimu (4,513 ha, 3.4 %); Hawa Galan (3,028 ha, 3.6 %); Metu Zuria (1,993 ha, 2.6 %); Bure (1,666 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 26 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.

ET · Ethiopia · 2016-12-26 → 2017-01-14

Metu Zuria fire, December 2016 Darimu, Hawa Galan, Metu Zuria

Out · last detection 15 Jan 2017, 22:21 UTC

The fire started on 26 December 2016 in Metu Zuria, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,128 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 3th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 18 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 309.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Darimu · 2016 Metu Zuria · 2017 Hawa Galan · 2016 Metu Zuria · 2017

Burnt area: 11,128ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 26 Dec 2016 – 14 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 4; districts
Started on: 26 Dec; 2016
Heat detections: 458; in a single hotspot: 83 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 189MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Dec14 Jan

Play back 15 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

27 Dec 30 Dec 2 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 12 Jan 15 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

34°high

26km/h · peak gust

8%lowest humidity

It had gone 47 days 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?

It burned the equivalent of 7% of the area of London (111 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

Darimu

4,513 ha reached on 2 Jan

3.4 %
Hawa Galan

3,028 ha reached on 31 Dec

3.6 %
Metu Zuria where it started

1,993 ha reached on 27 Dec

2.6 %
Bure

1,666 ha reached on 28 Dec

1.5 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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	Danger (FWI)
26 Dec	30.6 °C	36 %	22 km/h	High 30
27 Dec	30.7 °C	29 %	18 km/h	High 28
28 Dec	31.7 °C	26 %	18 km/h	High 30
29 Dec	32.4 °C	24 %	21 km/h	High 31
30 Dec	33.1 °C	22 %	20 km/h	High 33
31 Dec	32.5 °C	24 %	17 km/h	High 32
1 Jan	32.0 °C	25 %	22 km/h	High 34
2 Jan	33.1 °C	19 %	20 km/h	High 35
3 Jan	33.4 °C	20 %	19 km/h	High 36
4 Jan	33.0 °C	19 %	18 km/h	High 36
5 Jan	32.3 °C	19 %	19 km/h	High 36
6 Jan	33.1 °C	11 %	19 km/h	Very high 41
7 Jan	33.5 °C	10 %	18 km/h	Very high 43
8 Jan	33.6 °C	11 %	20 km/h	Very high 42
9 Jan	33.6 °C	14 %	26 km/h	Very high 44
10 Jan	33.2 °C	16 %	22 km/h	Very high 43
11 Jan	34.2 °C	10 %	25 km/h	Very high 46
12 Jan	33.4 °C	8 %	20 km/h	Very high 44
13 Jan	33.7 °C	11 %	18 km/h	Very high 45
14 Jan	34.2 °C	13 %	18 km/h	Very high 46
15 Jan after	34.6 °C	11 %	23 km/h	Very high 44
16 Jan after	35.2 °C	14 %	19 km/h	Very high 45
17 Jan after	34.3 °C	15 %	19 km/h	Very high 45
18 Jan after	34.4 °C	12 %	19 km/h	Very high 45
19 Jan after	34.8 °C	14 %	23 km/h	Very high 46
20 Jan after	33.3 °C	16 %	26 km/h	Very high 45
21 Jan after	34.4 °C	15 %	21 km/h	Very high 44
22 Jan after	35.0 °C	19 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
23 Jan after	35.5 °C	17 %	26 km/h	Very high 45
24 Jan after	35.0 °C	15 %	26 km/h	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Dec 2016

After · 21 Jan 2017

Before After

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 · 458Every 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

All fires in Ethiopia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Metu Zuria fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2016 to 14 January 2017 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 December 2016 to 8 January 2017.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,128 hectares (111.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 4 municipalities: Darimu (4,513 ha, 3.4 %); Hawa Galan (3,028 ha, 3.6 %); Metu Zuria (1,993 ha, 2.6 %); Bure (1,666 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.2 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 26 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.

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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 January 2017 → 14 January 2017.
27 October 2026 Start date: 31 December 2016 → 26 December 2016.

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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What really happened?

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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 31 December 2016 to 8 January 2017. 458 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.

Where it burned