Yaso fire, 16 February 2020 Yaso, Ibantu, Gida Ayana
The fire started on 16 February 2020 in Yaso, Ethiopia, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,506 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 45th largest in Oromia since 2016 (of 264 with a page). Number 45 in Ethiopia in 2020, of 177.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Yaso · 2019Yaso · 2017Yaso · 2016Ibantu · 2019
- Burnt area
- 4,506ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 16 Feb 2020 – 2 Mar 2020
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- districts
- Started on
- 16 Feb
- 2020
- Heat detections
- 163
- in a single hotspot: 60 MW
- Danger at start
- 35
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 65MW
- 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
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,660 ha in 2016, 3,184 ha in 2017, 3,696 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,504 ha that had burned before.
- 2,070 ha Yaso fire, January 2019 6,045 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,822 ha Yaso fire, January 2017 11,905 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,709 ha Yaso fire, February 2016 3,111 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,463 ha Ibantu fire, February 2019 2,935 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,354 ha Yaso fire, January 2016 8,828 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 760 ha Gida Ayana fire, February 2017 2,817 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 199 ha Ibantu fire, February 2016 2,506 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 65 ha Gida Ayana fire, February 2016 4,320 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
-
Yaso where it started3,534 ha reached on 16 Feb1.4 %
-
837 ha reached on 27 Feb1.0 %
-
167 ha reached on 27 Feb0.1 %
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 0.14 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16 Feb | 31.8 °C | 24 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Feb | 36.3 °C | 17 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 18 Feb | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 19 Feb | 35.6 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 20 Feb | 35.6 °C | 15 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 21 Feb | 35.2 °C | 18 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 22 Feb | 35.5 °C | 18 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 23 Feb | 35.8 °C | 15 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 24 Feb | 35.4 °C | 14 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 25 Feb | 32.1 °C | 19 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 26 Feb | 33.5 °C | 21 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 27 Feb | 35.9 °C | 19 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 28 Feb | 35.2 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 29 Feb | 34.0 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 1 Mar | 34.6 °C | 13 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 50 |
| 2 Mar | 34.9 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 3 Mar after | 35.6 °C | 15 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 4 Mar after | 34.6 °C | 12 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 5 Mar after | 34.9 °C | 17 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 6 Mar after | 34.8 °C | 17 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
| 7 Mar after | 35.5 °C | 17 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 8 Mar after | 36.1 °C | 20 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 9 Mar after | 34.0 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 10 Mar after | 35.6 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 11 Mar after | 35.7 °C | 11 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 51 |
| 12 Mar after | 35.8 °C | 14 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 45 |
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 · 163Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,828 haYaso5 January 2016 · 17 days · 4 km away
- 11,905 haYaso1 January 2017 · 15 days · 8 km away
- 8,938 haYaso24 January 2021 · 11 days · 14 km away
- 7,791 haDibat16 January 2020 · 29 days · 20 km away
- 13,228 haWembermaJanuary 2016 · 18 days · 24 km away
- 8,143 haDibat29 February 2016 · 15 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Yaso fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 February 2020 to 2 March 2020 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 February 2020 to 29 February 2020.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,506 hectares (45.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Yaso (3,534 ha, 1.4 %); Ibantu (837 ha, 1.0 %); Gida Ayana (167 ha, 0.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 41 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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
History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 29 February 2020 → 2 March 2020.
- Start date: 20 February 2020 → 16 February 2020.
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 20 February 2020 to 29 February 2020. 163 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.