How long did the Bassa fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2016 to 4 February 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2016 to 28 January 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,517 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Bassa (2,534 ha, 1.3 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.

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 · 13 Jan 2016 – 4 Feb 2016

Bassa fire, 13 January 2016 Bassa

Out · last detection 4 Feb 2016, 12:55 UTC

The fire started on 13 January 2016 in Bassa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,517 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Kogi since 2016 (of 48 with a page). Number 110 in Nigeria in 2016, of 198.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.4 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bassa · 2022 Bassa · 2022 Bassa · 2016 Toto · 2022

Burnt area: 2,517ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 13 Jan 2016 – 4 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 13 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 111; in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 17MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Jan4 Feb

Play back 4 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

13 Jan 19 Jan 25 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

38°high

45km/h · peak gust

6%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (25 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

Bassa where it started

2,534 ha reached on 13 Jan

1.3 %

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 2015

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
13 Jan	36.6 °C	11 %	28 km/h	Extreme 53
14 Jan	37.5 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
15 Jan	37.9 °C	11 %	28 km/h	Extreme 52
16 Jan	37.0 °C	13 %	26 km/h	Extreme 51
17 Jan	36.0 °C	34 %	27 km/h	Very high 39
18 Jan	37.3 °C	19 %	26 km/h	Very high 39
19 Jan	36.7 °C	9 %	29 km/h	Very high 50
20 Jan	35.4 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 50
21 Jan	36.0 °C	6 %	32 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Jan	36.3 °C	8 %	27 km/h	Extreme 53
23 Jan	36.3 °C	9 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
24 Jan	34.0 °C	10 %	32 km/h	Extreme 56
25 Jan	34.6 °C	10 %	44 km/h	Extreme 64
26 Jan	33.0 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 59
27 Jan	34.0 °C	13 %	45 km/h	Extreme 62
28 Jan	33.3 °C	14 %	45 km/h	Extreme 59
29 Jan	34.5 °C	12 %	44 km/h	Extreme 59
30 Jan	34.3 °C	12 %	42 km/h	Extreme 58
31 Jan	34.9 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 53
1 Feb	35.7 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 51
2 Feb	36.8 °C	9 %	34 km/h	Extreme 53
3 Feb	37.5 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Very high 49
4 Feb	37.7 °C	18 %	27 km/h	Very high 49
5 Feb after	37.8 °C	10 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
6 Feb after	38.0 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
7 Feb after	38.4 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
8 Feb after	37.2 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Very high 50
9 Feb after	35.9 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
10 Feb after	36.7 °C	9 %	31 km/h	Extreme 52
11 Feb after	37.4 °C	8 %	36 km/h	Extreme 56
12 Feb after	37.0 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Extreme 51
13 Feb after	37.4 °C	9 %	26 km/h	Extreme 51
14 Feb after	36.1 °C	25 %	27 km/h	Very high 45

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Jan 2016

After · 11 Feb 2016

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.

Detections table · 111Every 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 Bassa fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 January 2016 to 4 February 2016 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 January 2016 to 28 January 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,517 hectares (25.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Bassa (2,534 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.9 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 64, class Extreme.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 January 2016 → 4 February 2016.
27 October 2026 Start date: 20 January 2016 → 13 January 2016.

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.

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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 20 January 2016 to 28 January 2016. 111 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 2015, 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