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Donga fire, January 2021 Donga

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2021, 12:53 UTC

The fire started on 11 January 2021 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,019 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 157th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 182 in Nigeria in 2021, of 184.

Burnt area
2,019ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
11 Jan 2021 – 15 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
11 Jan
2021
Heat detections
76
in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Energy released
693MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

16 Jan 2021
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Jan15 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

111213141516

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

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 689 ha in 2016, 882 ha in 2017, 336 ha in 2018, 358 ha in 2019, 42 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,066 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Donga where it started
    2,030 ha reached on 9 Jan
    0.6 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Jan 2021
After · 22 Jan 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 · 76Every 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 11 January 2021 and 15 January 2021: 5 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 2,019 hectares (20.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Donga (2,030 ha, 0.6 %).
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.