How long did the Birnin Gwari fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2018 to 19 January 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2018 to 12 January 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,546 hectares (45.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Birnin Gwari (4,571 ha, 0.7 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2018-01-04 → 2018-01-19

Birnin Gwari fire, 4 January 2018 Birnin Gwari

Out · last detection 20 Jan 2018, 12:29 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2018 in Birnin Gwari, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,546 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 12th largest in Kaduna since 2016 (of 93 with a page). Number 9 in Nigeria in 2018, of 63.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Birnin Gwari · 2016 Birnin Gwari · 2022 Mariga · 2024 Rafi · 2026

Burnt area: 4,546ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 16days; 4 Jan 2018 – 19 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 255; in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start: 60; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 108MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan19 Jan

Play back 20 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jan 6 Jan 7 Jan 10 Jan 13 Jan 16 Jan 19 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

49km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,346 ha in 2016, 876 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,948 ha that had burned before.

1,346 ha Birnin Gwari fire, January 2016 2,546 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (45 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

Birnin Gwari where it started

4,571 ha reached on 4 Jan

0.7 %

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 2020

Built-up area6.0 ha

Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 6.0 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 residents (GHSL 2020, 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)
4 Jan	30.8 °C	9 %	49 km/h	Extreme 60
5 Jan	31.0 °C	10 %	43 km/h	Extreme 56
6 Jan	31.6 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
7 Jan	32.8 °C	16 %	28 km/h	Very high 49
8 Jan	32.9 °C	17 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
9 Jan	33.5 °C	12 %	33 km/h	Extreme 51
10 Jan	33.5 °C	12 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
11 Jan	33.1 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 54
12 Jan	33.4 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 52
13 Jan	32.3 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
14 Jan	31.7 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 57
15 Jan	32.8 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
16 Jan	32.9 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Jan	33.0 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
18 Jan	33.5 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56
19 Jan	34.6 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Jan after	34.2 °C	9 %	33 km/h	Extreme 55
21 Jan after	34.3 °C	7 %	30 km/h	Extreme 54
22 Jan after	33.5 °C	8 %	41 km/h	Extreme 62
23 Jan after	32.7 °C	9 %	40 km/h	Extreme 61
24 Jan after	31.9 °C	11 %	38 km/h	Extreme 60
25 Jan after	32.6 °C	11 %	39 km/h	Extreme 60
26 Jan after	32.9 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
27 Jan after	33.1 °C	14 %	39 km/h	Extreme 58
28 Jan after	33.3 °C	15 %	35 km/h	Extreme 56
29 Jan after	32.9 °C	10 %	37 km/h	Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Dec 2017

After · 26 Jan 2018

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 · 255Every 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 Birnin Gwari fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 January 2018 to 19 January 2018 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2018 to 12 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,546 hectares (45.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Birnin Gwari (4,571 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.6 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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: 12 January 2018 → 19 January 2018.
27 October 2026 Start date: 5 January 2018 → 4 January 2018.

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?

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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 5 January 2018 to 12 January 2018. 255 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 2020, 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