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Damboa fire, 29 November 2019 Kaga, Damboa, Konduga

Out · last detection 10 Dec 2019, 12:10 UTC

The fire started on 29 November 2019 in Damboa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 12,660 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 16th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 463 with a page). Number 2 in Nigeria in 2019, of 103.

The power measured by the satellite is low (22.1 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: Damboa · 2016Kaga · 2025Damboa · 2017Konduga · 2021

Burnt area
12,660ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
29 Nov 2019 – 11 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
29 Nov
2019
Heat detections
363
in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Nov11 Dec
10 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

29 Nov 2019 · 2 MW · 1 30 Nov 2019 · 13 MW · 4 1 Dec 2019 · 35 MW · 12 2 Dec 2019 · 97 MW · 34 3 Dec 2019 · 107 MW · 18 4 Dec 2019 · 120 MW · 40 5 Dec 2019 · 282 MW · 68 6 Dec 2019 · 202 MW · 55 7 Dec 2019 · 173 MW · 57 8 Dec 2019 · 161 MW · 38 9 Dec 2019 · 140 MW · 25 10 Dec 2019 · 43 MW · 11
29 Nov 1 Dec 3 Dec 5 Dec 7 Dec 9 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

34°high
34km/h · peak gust
14%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

18% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 110 ha in 2016, 2,218 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8% of the area of London (127 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. Kaga
    9,100 ha reached on 2 Dec
    2.5 %
  2. Damboa where it started
    3,632 ha reached on 29 Nov
    0.8 %
  3. Konduga
    1 ha
    0.0 %

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.

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)
1 Dec 32.8 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
2 Dec 32.2 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
3 Dec 31.5 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
4 Dec 32.6 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
5 Dec 34.0 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Dec 33.2 °C 17 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Dec 32.9 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Dec 34.0 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Dec 33.2 °C 14 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
10 Dec 32.8 °C 17 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Dec 33.2 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
12 Dec after 31.9 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Dec after 30.8 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Dec after 30.2 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Dec after 31.0 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec after 32.5 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Dec after 32.2 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
18 Dec after 33.1 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Dec after 32.0 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec after 31.3 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Nov 2019
After · 18 Dec 2019

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 · 363Every 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 Damboa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 November 2019 to 11 December 2019 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 December 2019 to 10 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 12,660 hectares (126.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Kaga (9,100 ha, 2.5 %); Damboa (3,632 ha, 0.8 %); Konduga (1 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.0 °C, humidity dropped to 14 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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
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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 1 December 2019 to 10 December 2019. 363 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.

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.