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Quara fire, 3 December 2020 Quara

Out · last detection 13 Dec 2020, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2020 in Quara, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,982 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Amhara since 2016 (of 172 with a page). Number 7 in Ethiopia in 2020, of 177.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Quara · 2017Quara · 2016Quara · 2018Quara · 2017

Burnt area
10,982ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
3 Dec 2020 – 13 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
districts
Started on
3 Dec
2020
Heat detections
320
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
355MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec13 Dec
13 Dec 2020

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2020 · 154 MW · 31 4 Dec 2020 · 206 MW · 41 5 Dec 2020 · 2,245 MW · 131 6 Dec 2020 · 218 MW · 59 7 Dec 2020 · 233 MW · 38 8 Dec 2020 · 38 MW · 8 9 Dec 2020 · 80 MW · 7 11 Dec 2020 · 1 MW · 1 13 Dec 2020 · 20 MW · 4
3 Dec 5 Dec 7 Dec 9 Dec 13 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
30km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 32 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

87% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,906 ha in 2016, 5,706 ha in 2017, 1,791 ha in 2018, 6,781 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,582 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.9% of the area of London (110 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. Quara where it started
    11,039 ha reached on 3 Dec
    1.3 %

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)
3 Dec 35.8 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
4 Dec 35.5 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Dec 35.9 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Dec 36.9 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Dec 39.0 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Dec 38.1 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
9 Dec 38.6 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Dec 38.9 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Dec 38.8 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Dec 38.0 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Dec 38.9 °C 11 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Dec after 38.3 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
15 Dec after 38.7 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
16 Dec after 38.5 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Dec after 37.5 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Dec after 37.2 °C 16 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Dec after 37.7 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Dec after 37.7 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
21 Dec after 38.2 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Dec after 39.4 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
23 Dec after 39.7 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Nov 2020
After · 20 Dec 2020

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 · 320Every 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 Quara fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 December 2020 to 13 December 2020 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 3 December 2020 to 9 December 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,982 hectares (109.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Quara (11,039 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 30 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 9 December 2020 → 13 December 2020.

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 3 December 2020 to 9 December 2020. 320 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.