Skip to content
worldfires
en
NG · Nigeria · →

Borgu fire, 14 December 2020 Borgu

Out · last detection 19 Dec 2020, 13:19 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2020 in Borgu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,868 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 159th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 57 in Nigeria in 2020, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Borgu · 2016Borgu · 2016Borgu · 2020Borgu · 2018

Burnt area
2,868ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
14 Dec 2020 – 19 Dec 2020
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
14 Dec
2020
Heat detections
79
in a single hotspot: 46 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
87MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec19 Dec
19 Dec 2020

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2020 · 2 MW · 1 16 Dec 2020 · 299 MW · 26 17 Dec 2020 · 28 MW · 22 18 Dec 2020 · 40 MW · 21 19 Dec 2020 · 64 MW · 9
14 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

36°high
32km/h · peak gust
19%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 817 ha in 2016, 371 ha in 2017, 6 ha in 2018, 632 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,584 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.8% of the area of London (29 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

  1. Borgu where it started
    2,885 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Rain Danger (FWI)
14 Dec 35.7 °C 23 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
15 Dec 36.0 °C 23 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Dec 34.5 °C 24 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Dec 33.4 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Dec 32.8 °C 24 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Dec 33.1 °C 25 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
20 Dec after 33.7 °C 26 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
21 Dec after 34.1 °C 24 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
22 Dec after 33.9 °C 22 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Dec after 34.3 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Dec after 34.3 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Dec after 32.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
26 Dec after 32.0 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
27 Dec after 31.9 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Dec after 32.2 °C 19 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Dec after 33.5 °C 18 % 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 · 7 Dec 2020
After · 26 Dec 2020

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 · 79Every 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 Borgu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 December 2020 and 19 December 2020: 6 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 2,868 hectares (28.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Borgu (2,885 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.0 °C, humidity dropped to 19 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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

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?

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 79 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.