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Donga fire, March 2022 Donga, Bali, Kurmi

Out · last detection 29 Mar 2022, 13:00 UTC

The fire started on 23 March 2022 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,121 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 138th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 111 in Nigeria in 2022, of 125.

Burnt area
2,121ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
7days
23 Mar 2022 – 29 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
23 Mar
2022
Heat detections
82
in a single hotspot: 58 MW
Energy released
839MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Mar 2022
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Mar29 Mar

How it evolved, day by day

232426272829

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

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 648 ha in 2017, 885 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,217 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Donga where it started
    1,470 ha reached on 23 Mar
    0.5 %
  2. Bali
    550 ha reached on 26 Mar
    0.1 %
  3. Kurmi
    113 ha reached on 27 Mar
    0.0 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Mar 2022
After · 5 Apr 2022

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 · 82Every 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 23 March 2022 and 29 March 2022: 7 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 2,121 hectares (21.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Donga (1,470 ha, 0.5 %); Bali (550 ha, 0.1 %); Kurmi (113 ha, 0.0 %).
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.