How long did the Bali fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 January 2026 to 8 February 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2026 to 1 February 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,460 hectares (34.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bali (3,480 ha, 0.4 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 · 2026-01-17 → 2026-02-08

Bali fire, 17 January 2026 Bali

Out · last detection 8 Feb 2026, 00:46 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2026 in Bali, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,460 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 37th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 80 in Nigeria in 2026, of 229.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bali · 2026 Bali · 2025 Donga · 2026 Kurmi · 2026

Burnt area: 3,460ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 17 Jan 2026 – 8 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 17 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 65; in a single hotspot: 92 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 33MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan8 Feb

Play back 8 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jan 23 Jan 25 Jan 26 Jan 27 Jan 30 Jan 3 Feb 7 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

37°high

31km/h · peak gust

17%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 634 ha in 2017, 833 ha in 2021, 1,165 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,110 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

3,480 ha reached on 17 Jan

0.4 %

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 area5.4 ha

Residents≈ 950

Inside the perimeter there were about 5.4 hectares of built-up land and about 950 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)
22 Jan	34.7 °C	40 %	28 km/h	0.1 mm	High 30
23 Jan	37.0 °C	20 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
24 Jan	36.6 °C	20 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
25 Jan	36.8 °C	19 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
26 Jan	36.2 °C	18 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
27 Jan	35.6 °C	17 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
28 Jan	35.3 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Jan	36.6 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
30 Jan	35.1 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
31 Jan	36.4 °C	26 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
1 Feb	37.2 °C	31 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
2 Feb	39.3 °C	18 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
3 Feb	38.5 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Feb	36.7 °C	25 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
5 Feb	38.5 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Feb	37.3 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 39
7 Feb	37.1 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
8 Feb	38.0 °C	24 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Feb after	38.1 °C	24 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
10 Feb after	38.0 °C	25 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
11 Feb after	36.4 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Jan 2026

After · 15 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 29 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 94 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 87: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak94 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM10301 µg/m³

Optical depth0.97

WHO 15

2021222324252627282930311234

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 · 65Every 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 17 January 2026 to 8 February 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2026 to 1 February 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,460 hectares (34.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bali (3,480 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.2 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 42, 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 22 January 2026 to 1 February 2026. 65 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