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Agatu fire, December 2024 Agatu, Gwer West

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2024, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2024 in Agatu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,151 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 70th largest in Benue since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 103 in Nigeria in 2024, of 118.

Burnt area
2,151ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
15 Dec 2024 – 23 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
15 Dec
2024
Heat detections
70
in a single hotspot: 133 MW
Energy released
594MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

23 Dec 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec23 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

151617181920212223

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

This area had burned before

90% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 370 ha in 2018, 90 ha in 2019, 689 ha in 2020, 583 ha in 2021, 697 ha in 2022, 1,547 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,940 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Agatu where it started
    1,173 ha reached on 8 Dec
    1.1 %
  2. Gwer West
    992 ha reached on 15 Dec
    0.8 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2024
After · 30 Dec 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 16 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 122 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 102: 6.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak122 µg/m³
Days over the guideline14 days
PM10308 µg/m³
Optical depth0.64
1314151617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 70Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Agatu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 December 2024 and 23 December 2024: 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 2,151 hectares (21.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agatu (1,173 ha, 1.1 %); Gwer West (992 ha, 0.8 %).
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Nigeria (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.

Emergency number: 112

Satellite cross-check

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
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 112.

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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.