Donga fire, 7 January 2025 Donga
The fire started on 7 January 2025 in Donga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,568 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 24th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 81 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.
- Burnt area
- 4,568ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 8days
- 7 Jan 2025 – 14 Jan 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 7 Jan
- 2025
- Heat detections
- 200
- in a single hotspot: 44 MW
- Danger at start
- 46
- Very high · FWI index
- Energy released
- 1.3GW
- sum of detected power
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 20 Jan.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 304 ha in 2016, 682 ha in 2017, 1,464 ha in 2018, 1,316 ha in 2019, 1,490 ha in 2020, 316 ha in 2021, 1,076 ha in 2022, 1,980 ha in 2023, 469 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,243 ha that had burned before.
- 1,316 ha Donga fire, January 2019 3,179 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 682 ha Donga fire, January 2017 2,096 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 543 ha Donga fire, January 2023 2,534 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 288 ha Donga fire, January 2016 2,214 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 100 ha Donga fire, January 2021 2,019 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 54 ha Donga fire, January 2022 2,050 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Kurmi fire, January 2021 3,426 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Donga where it started4,595 ha reached on 7 Jan1.5 %
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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 7 Jan | 35.8 °C | 21 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 8 Jan | 36.4 °C | 18 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 9 Jan | 34.9 °C | 21 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 10 Jan | 34.9 °C | 20 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 11 Jan | 35.3 °C | 19 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 12 Jan | 33.7 °C | 18 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 13 Jan | 35.5 °C | 23 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 14 Jan | 36.1 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 15 Jan after | 36.6 °C | 24 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 16 Jan after | 37.8 °C | 21 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 17 Jan after | 39.1 °C | 19 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 18 Jan after | 38.7 °C | 13 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 19 Jan after | 35.1 °C | 33 % | 30 km/h | 0.3 mm | High 36 |
| 20 Jan after | 34.4 °C | 49 % | 29 km/h | 1.0 mm | Moderate 20 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 8 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 77 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 63: 4.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.
Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)
Detections table · 200Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,631 haDonga8 January 2026 · 21 days · 15 km away
- 57,756 haDonga1 January 2026 · 31 days · 19 km away
- 4,778 haKurmi19 February 2026 · 14 days · 23 km away
- 5,917 haKurmiFebruary 2024 · 12 days · 32 km away
- 8,262 haKurmiJanuary 2025 · 18 days · 33 km away
- 16,731 haBali19 February 2026 · 18 days · 39 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Donga fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 7 January 2025 and 14 January 2025: 8 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 4,568 hectares (45.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Donga (4,595 ha, 1.5 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 36.4 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 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
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
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.