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Agatu fire, 31 December 2025 Agatu, Apa

Out · last detection 10 Jan 2026, 12:34 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2025 in Agatu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,265 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 34th largest in Benue since 2016 (of 83 with a page). Number 122 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

The power measured by the satellite is low (27.2 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…

Suggestions: Gwer West · 2025Omala · 2026Apa · 2022Gwer West · 2018

Burnt area
3,265ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
31 Dec 2025 – 12 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
31 Dec
2025
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 27 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
40MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec12 Jan
10 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

1 Jan 2026 · 5 MW · 1 3 Jan 2026 · 63 MW · 10 4 Jan 2026 · 41 MW · 6 5 Jan 2026 · 33 MW · 5 6 Jan 2026 · 158 MW · 16 8 Jan 2026 · 4 MW · 1 9 Jan 2026 · 6 MW · 4 10 Jan 2026 · 13 MW · 2
1 Jan 4 Jan 6 Jan 9 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
33km/h · peak gust
15%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 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Agatu where it started
    3,178 ha reached on 28 Dec
    3.0 %
  2. Apa
    108 ha reached on 29 Dec
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area0.11 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.11 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
31 Dec 37.0 °C 35 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Jan 39.2 °C 29 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
2 Jan 36.8 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
3 Jan 36.5 °C 34 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Jan 38.1 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Jan 37.2 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
6 Jan 37.7 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
7 Jan 36.1 °C 30 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jan 35.7 °C 36 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Jan 38.3 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Jan 37.0 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Jan 35.5 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
12 Jan 35.1 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Jan after 36.5 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Jan after 35.3 °C 20 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
15 Jan after 35.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jan after 36.6 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jan after 36.7 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
18 Jan after 37.2 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Jan after 38.1 °C 34 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
20 Jan after 38.1 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Jan after 38.0 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
22 Jan after 36.6 °C 28 % 30 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.

Before · 24 Dec 2025
After · 19 Jan 2026

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 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 107: 7.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³
Days over the guideline18 days
PM10320 µg/m³
Optical depth0.84
293031123456789101112131415
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 · 58Every 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 31 December 2025 and 12 January 2026: 13 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 3,265 hectares (32.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Agatu (3,178 ha, 3.0 %); Apa (108 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 39.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

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.

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.

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. 58 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

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 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.