Wenbera fire, 22 February 2022 Wenbera, Sirba Abay
The fire started on 22 February 2022 in Wenbera, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,221 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 168th largest in Beneshangul Gumu since 2016 (of 700 with a page). Number 20 in Ethiopia in 2022, of 135.
The power measured by the satellite is low (15.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,221ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 10days
- 22 Feb 2022 – 3 Mar 2022
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- districts
- Started on
- 22 Feb
- 2022
- Heat detections
- 95
- in a single hotspot: 15 MW
- Danger at start
- 51
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 38MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
98% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,647 ha in 2016, 1,984 ha in 2017, 644 ha in 2018, 1,657 ha in 2019, 2,644 ha in 2020, 890 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,154 ha that had burned before.
- 1,608 ha Wenbera fire, March 2019 2,558 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,368 ha Wenbera fire, February 2016 2,459 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,313 ha Wenbera fire, February 2020 3,918 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,290 ha Wenbera fire, March 2020 3,898 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 916 ha Wenbera fire, December 2017 2,472 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 565 ha Sirba Abay fire, February 2017 4,790 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 477 ha Sirba Abay fire, January 2017 3,658 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 40 ha Wenbera fire, March 2020 3,237 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Wenbera where it started4,249 ha reached on 22 Feb0.6 %
-
0 ha0.0 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.09 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 22 Feb | 36.6 °C | 14 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 23 Feb | 36.8 °C | 10 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 24 Feb | 38.2 °C | 10 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 25 Feb | 36.3 °C | 7 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 26 Feb | 37.2 °C | 9 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 27 Feb | 37.8 °C | 12 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 28 Feb | 38.3 °C | 14 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 1 Mar | 40.1 °C | 16 % | 32 km/h | 0.1 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 2 Mar | 40.2 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 3 Mar | 41.1 °C | 9 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 4 Mar after | 40.8 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 5 Mar after | 41.4 °C | 7 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 6 Mar after | 40.7 °C | 10 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 95Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wenbera fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 February 2022 to 3 March 2022 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 February 2022 to 24 February 2022.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,221 hectares (42.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wenbera (4,249 ha, 0.6 %); Sirba Abay (0 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 30 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 24 February 2022 → 3 March 2022.
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.
Report an error
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 22 February 2022 to 24 February 2022. 95 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.
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.