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Dan Musa fire, December 2021 Dan Musa, Gusau

Out · last detection 11 Dec 2021, 13:27 UTC

The fire started on 6 December 2021 in Dan Musa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,596 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 5th largest in Katsina since 2016 (of 29 with a page). Number 33 in Nigeria in 2021, of 184.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Dan Musa · 2019Safana · 2026Gusau · 2025Safana · 2022

Burnt area
4,596ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
6 Dec 2021 – 12 Dec 2021
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
6 Dec
2021
Heat detections
176
in a single hotspot: 38 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
150MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Dec12 Dec
11 Dec 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Dec 2021 · 75 MW · 7 7 Dec 2021 · 574 MW · 61 8 Dec 2021 · 68 MW · 31 9 Dec 2021 · 62 MW · 26 10 Dec 2021 · 39 MW · 18 11 Dec 2021 · 84 MW · 33
6 Dec 7 Dec 8 Dec 9 Dec 10 Dec 11 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

32°high
37km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 49 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

55% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,920 ha in 2019, 1,533 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,527 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.9% of the area of London (46 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. Dan Musa where it started
    3,057 ha reached on 6 Dec
    2.8 %
  2. Gusau
    1,568 ha reached on 7 Dec
    0.8 %

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 area0.16 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.16 hectares of built-up land and about 20 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 Rain Danger (FWI)
6 Dec 32.5 °C 19 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Dec 32.0 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Dec 29.4 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
9 Dec 29.7 °C 20 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
10 Dec 30.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Dec 32.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
12 Dec 32.5 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Dec after 32.8 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Dec after 31.2 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
15 Dec after 29.5 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Dec after 29.1 °C 18 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Dec after 27.9 °C 20 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
18 Dec after 27.2 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
19 Dec after 26.5 °C 21 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Dec after 27.7 °C 19 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Dec after 27.9 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Dec after 29.4 °C 17 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Nov 2021
After · 19 Dec 2021

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 · 176Every 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 Dan Musa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 December 2021 to 12 December 2021 (7 days). The perimeter dates it from 7 December 2021 to 11 December 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,596 hectares (46.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Dan Musa (3,057 ha, 2.8 %); Gusau (1,568 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 11 December 2021 → 12 December 2021.
  2. Start date: 7 December 2021 → 6 December 2021.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 7 December 2021 to 11 December 2021. 176 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.