How long did the Bali fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 7 January 2026 to 26 January 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,187 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bali (2,202 ha, 0.2 %).

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 · 2026-01-07 → 2026-01-26

Bali fire, 7 January 2026 Bali

Out · last detection 27 Jan 2026, 01:11 UTC

The fire started on 7 January 2026 in Bali, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,187 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 123th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 193 in Nigeria in 2026, of 229.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area: 2,187ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 7 Jan 2026 – 26 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 7 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 74; in a single hotspot: 40 MW
Average daily power: 30MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 7 Jan26 Jan

Play back 27 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

8 Jan 11 Jan 15 Jan 16 Jan 18 Jan 23 Jan 27 Jan

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

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11 ha in 2017, 127 ha in 2025.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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

2,202 ha reached on 8 Jan

0.2 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 31 Dec 2025

After · 2 Feb 2026

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 15 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 76: 5.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak96 µg/m³

Days over the guideline11 days

PM10328 µg/m³

Optical depth0.77

WHO 15

1213141516171819202122

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 · 74Every 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 7 January 2026 to 26 January 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 January 2026 to 19 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,187 hectares (21.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bali (2,202 ha, 0.2 %).
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 14 January 2026 to 19 January 2026. 74 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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