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Anka fire, December 2024 Anka

Out · last detection 14 Dec 2024, 13:20 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2024 in Anka, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,646 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 118th largest in Zamfara since 2016 (of 208 with a page). Number 66 in Nigeria in 2024, of 118.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area
2,646ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
9 Dec 2024 – 14 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
9 Dec
2024
Heat detections
50
in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Energy released
289MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

14 Dec 2024
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec14 Dec

How it evolved, day by day

91011121314

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

This area had burned before

99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,061 ha in 2016, 651 ha in 2017, 1,062 ha in 2018, 780 ha in 2019, 685 ha in 2020, 1,186 ha in 2021, 270 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,627 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Anka where it started
    2,660 ha reached on 9 Dec
    1.0 %

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 · 2 Dec 2024
After · 21 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 15 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 385 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 303: 20 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak385 µg/m³
Days over the guideline11 days
PM102,496 µg/m³
Optical depth1.63
7891011121314151617
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 · 50Every 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 Anka fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 December 2024 and 14 December 2024: 6 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 2,646 hectares (26.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Anka (2,660 ha, 1.0 %).
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.