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Bama fire, 25 October 2025 Bama

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2025, 12:02 UTC

The fire started on 25 October 2025 in Bama, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,552 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 47th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 50 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Burnt area
6,552ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
25 Oct 2025 – 29 Oct 2025
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
25 Oct
2025
Heat detections
94
in a single hotspot: 105 MW
Danger at start
30
High · FWI index
Energy released
1.9GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Oct 2025
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 25 Oct29 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

252729

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
28km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

35% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,066 ha in 2017, 1,518 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,306 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Bama where it started
    6,593 ha reached on 25 Oct
    1.7 %

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.

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)
25 Oct 38.2 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
26 Oct 38.3 °C 22 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
27 Oct 37.0 °C 32 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
28 Oct 37.4 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Oct 36.5 °C 18 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
30 Oct after 37.4 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
31 Oct after 37.4 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Nov after 37.4 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
2 Nov after 37.4 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
3 Nov after 37.5 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Nov after 38.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
5 Nov after 38.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Nov after 37.7 °C 17 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
7 Nov after 37.5 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Nov after 37.8 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 18 Oct 2025
After · 5 Nov 2025

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 1 November 2025 the air beside the fire reached 108 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak108 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10137 µg/m³
Optical depth0.48
2324252627282930311
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 · 94Every 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 Bama fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 25 October 2025 and 29 October 2025: 5 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 6,552 hectares (65.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bama (6,593 ha, 1.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 37, class 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

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.