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Sayo fire, 29 December 2016 Gambela Zuria, Sayo, Anfilo

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2017, 10:54 UTC

The fire started on 29 December 2016 in Sayo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,725 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 72th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 102 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 309.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bure · 2017Hawa Galan · 2016Bure · 2021Gambela Zuria · 2017

Burnt area
3,725ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
29 Dec 2016 – 6 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
3
districts
Started on
29 Dec
2016
Heat detections
101
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
68MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Dec6 Jan
6 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

29 Dec 2016 · 56 MW · 2 30 Dec 2016 · 5 MW · 1 31 Dec 2016 · 102 MW · 7 1 Jan 2017 · 27 MW · 14 2 Jan 2017 · 47 MW · 17 3 Jan 2017 · 57 MW · 14 4 Jan 2017 · 133 MW · 21 5 Jan 2017 · 179 MW · 21 6 Jan 2017 · 3 MW · 1
29 Dec 31 Dec 2 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 6 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
29km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (37 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. Gambela Zuria
    2,788 ha reached on 30 Dec
    0.8 %
  2. Sayo where it started
    962 ha reached on 29 Dec
    0.9 %
  3. Anfilo
    0 ha reached on 11 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 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
29 Dec 34.0 °C 21 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
30 Dec 34.3 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
31 Dec 33.4 °C 21 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jan 32.4 °C 23 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
2 Jan 34.0 °C 19 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
3 Jan 33.5 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
4 Jan 33.2 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jan 32.4 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
6 Jan 33.3 °C 16 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Jan after 33.7 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
8 Jan after 34.9 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
9 Jan after 35.0 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Jan after 33.9 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jan after 34.9 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Jan after 33.8 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jan after 34.6 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan after 35.3 °C 9 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan after 35.8 °C 11 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Jan after 35.7 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Dec 2016
After · 13 Jan 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 · 101Every 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 Sayo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 December 2016 and 6 January 2017: 9 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 3,725 hectares (37.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Gambela Zuria (2,788 ha, 0.8 %); Sayo (962 ha, 0.9 %); Anfilo (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.3 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 29 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 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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 101 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.