How long did the Bali fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 January 2025 to 5 February 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 January 2025 to 3 February 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,271 hectares (32.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bali (3,293 ha, 0.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 30 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 Nigeria (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

NG · Nigeria · 2025-01-23 → 2025-02-05

Bali fire, 23 January 2025 Bali

Out · last detection 2 Feb 2025, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2025 in Bali, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,271 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 46th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 130 in Nigeria in 2025, of 320.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bali · 2021 Bali · 2026 Bali · 2024 Bali · 2026

Burnt area: 3,271ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 14days; 23 Jan 2025 – 5 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 23 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 129; in a single hotspot: 35 MW
Danger at start: 47; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 107MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan5 Feb

Play back 2 Feb 2025

How it evolved, day by day

24 Jan 27 Jan 29 Jan 31 Jan 2 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

39°high

30km/h · peak gust

14%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 326 ha in 2021, 507 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 593 ha that had burned before.

326 ha Bali fire, January 2021 2,383 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

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

Bali where it started

3,293 ha reached on 24 Jan

0.3 %

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 area0.37 ha

Residents≈ 60

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.37 hectares of built-up land and about 60 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	Danger (FWI)
30 Jan	37.2 °C	14 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
31 Jan	36.8 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
1 Feb	37.3 °C	14 %	25 km/h	Very high 49
2 Feb	38.1 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 50
3 Feb	39.3 °C	17 %	24 km/h	Very high 48
4 Feb	38.5 °C	13 %	30 km/h	Very high 50
5 Feb	37.6 °C	12 %	31 km/h	Extreme 50
6 Feb after	39.2 °C	11 %	24 km/h	Extreme 50
7 Feb after	38.5 °C	13 %	24 km/h	Extreme 50
8 Feb after	40.0 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
9 Feb after	39.8 °C	14 %	27 km/h	Extreme 51
10 Feb after	40.0 °C	13 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
11 Feb after	39.1 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
12 Feb after	38.3 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
13 Feb after	37.5 °C	15 %	31 km/h	Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jan 2025

After · 12 Feb 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 2 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 158 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 109: 7.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak158 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10341 µg/m³

Optical depth1.01

WHO 15

28293031123456

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 · 129Every 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 Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Bali fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 January 2025 to 5 February 2025 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 January 2025 to 3 February 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,271 hectares (32.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bali (3,293 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 30 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 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

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.

Report an error

What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 January 2025 to 3 February 2025. 129 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.

Where it burned