How long did the Yaso fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 January 2016 to 16 February 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2016 to 9 February 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,520 hectares (45.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yaso (4,548 ha, 1.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 34 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 · 2016-01-25 → 2016-02-16

Yaso fire, 25 January 2016 Yaso

Out · last detection 14 Feb 2016, 11:26 UTC

The fire started on 25 January 2016 in Yaso, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,520 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 72 in Ethiopia in 2016, of 322.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yaso · 2019 Agalometi · 2026 Agalometi · 2016 Agalometi · 2017

Burnt area: 4,520ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 25 Jan 2016 – 16 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; districts
Started on: 25 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 166; in a single hotspot: 56 MW
Danger at start: 43; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 78MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Jan16 Feb

Play back 14 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

25 Jan 1 Feb 2 Feb 4 Feb 7 Feb 10 Feb 14 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

34km/h · peak gust

13%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?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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

Yaso where it started

4,548 ha reached on 25 Jan

1.7 %

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	Danger (FWI)
1 Feb	34.9 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Very high 43
2 Feb	33.5 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Very high 43
3 Feb	35.2 °C	15 %	31 km/h	Very high 45
4 Feb	35.2 °C	16 %	27 km/h	Very high 45
5 Feb	35.1 °C	15 %	30 km/h	Very high 45
6 Feb	35.0 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 46
7 Feb	34.4 °C	15 %	34 km/h	Very high 46
8 Feb	35.1 °C	17 %	33 km/h	Very high 46
9 Feb	36.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Very high 45
10 Feb	35.8 °C	15 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
11 Feb	35.4 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
12 Feb	35.5 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 44
13 Feb	36.2 °C	14 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
14 Feb	36.9 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Very high 47
15 Feb	36.9 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Very high 48
16 Feb	36.5 °C	13 %	35 km/h	Extreme 51
17 Feb after	35.8 °C	14 %	36 km/h	Very high 50
18 Feb after	36.7 °C	15 %	30 km/h	Very high 47
19 Feb after	38.1 °C	9 %	28 km/h	Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 18 Jan 2016

After · 23 Feb 2016

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 · 166Every 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 Yaso fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 January 2016 to 16 February 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 February 2016 to 9 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,520 hectares (45.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yaso (4,548 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.6 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 34 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 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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What really happened?

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How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 1 February 2016 to 9 February 2016. 166 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.

Where it burned