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Shilabo fire, September 2018 Shilabo, Debeweyin

Out · last detection 11 Sept 2018, 10:59 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2018 in Shilabo, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,500 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 11 in Ethiopia in 2018, of 96.

Compare with…
Burnt area
7,500ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
9 Sept 2018 – 11 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
districts
Started on
9 Sept
2018
Heat detections
225
in a single hotspot: 96 MW
Danger at start
53
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
668MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept11 Sept
11 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 2018 · 1,471 MW · 150 10 Sept 2018 · 511 MW · 70 11 Sept 2018 · 23 MW · 5
9 Sept 10 Sept 11 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
49km/h · peak gust
27%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?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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. Shilabo where it started
    5,104 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.6 %
  2. Debeweyin
    2,445 ha reached on 9 Sept
    0.5 %

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.

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)
9 Sept 35.7 °C 27 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Sept 35.2 °C 31 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 35.3 °C 28 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Sept after 35.6 °C 25 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Sept after 35.2 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
14 Sept after 34.2 °C 35 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Sept after 34.0 °C 32 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
16 Sept after 35.7 °C 27 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
17 Sept after 34.6 °C 30 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Sept after 34.6 °C 24 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Sept after 34.8 °C 27 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Sept after 35.1 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
21 Sept after 34.1 °C 32 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Sept 2018
After · 18 Sept 2018

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 · 225Every 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

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Shilabo fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2018 and 11 September 2018: 3 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 7,500 hectares (75.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Shilabo (5,104 ha, 0.6 %); Debeweyin (2,445 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 27 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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 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. 225 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.

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.