Skip to content
worldfires
NG · Nigeria · →

Donga fire, 12 January 2019 Donga

Out · last detection 21 Jan 2019, 13:06 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2019 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,179 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 51th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 33 in Nigeria in 2019, of 106.

Burnt area
3,179ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
12 Jan 2019 – 21 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Jan
2019
Heat detections
108
in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start
47
Very high · FWI index
Energy released
904MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

21 Jan 2019
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan21 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

12131415161718192021

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
33km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 6.2 mm on 24 Jan.

This area had burned before

62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,248 ha in 2016, 830 ha in 2017, 927 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,981 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Donga where it started
    3,198 ha reached on 10 Jan
    1.0 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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)
12 Jan 36.5 °C 12 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Jan 36.7 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
14 Jan 35.7 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan 36.1 °C 12 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jan 36.7 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Jan 37.0 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Jan 37.5 °C 8 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
19 Jan 37.1 °C 9 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Jan 35.9 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Jan 37.5 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Jan after 37.8 °C 24 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Jan after 37.9 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
24 Jan after 35.4 °C 41 % 30 km/h 6.2 mm Low 7

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jan 2019
After · 28 Jan 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 · 108Every 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 Donga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 January 2019 and 21 January 2019: 10 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 3,179 hectares (31.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Donga (3,198 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.