How long did the Donga fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2023 and 5 January 2023: 4 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 2,534 hectares (25.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Donga (2,549 ha, 0.8 %).

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.

NG · Nigeria · 2023-01-02 → 2023-01-05

Donga fire, January 2023 Donga

Out · last detection 6 Jan 2023, 12:55 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2023 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,534 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 95 in Nigeria in 2023, of 161.

The power measured by the satellite is low (13.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 2,534ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 4days; 2 Jan 2023 – 5 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 2 Jan; 2023
Heat detections: 75; in a single hotspot: 14 MW
Energy released: 325MW; sum of detected power

Play back 6 Jan 2023

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan5 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

23456

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

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 281 ha in 2019, 154 ha in 2020, 298 ha in 2021, 17 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 591 ha that had burned before.

281 ha Donga fire, January 2019 3,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

What happened to each town

Donga where it started

2,549 ha reached on 2 Jan

0.8 %

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 · 26 Dec 2022

After · 12 Jan 2023

Before After

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 · 75Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Nigeria ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Donga fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2023 and 5 January 2023: 4 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 2,534 hectares (25.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Donga (2,549 ha, 0.8 %).
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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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.

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.

Where it burned