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Edu fire, 20 January 2026 Edu

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2026, 13:38 UTC

The fire started on 20 January 2026 in Edu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,047 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 32th largest in Kwara since 2016 (of 35 with a page). Number 247 in Nigeria in 2026, of 258.

The power measured by the satellite is low (25.3 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
2,047ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
20 Jan 2026 – 27 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
20 Jan
2026
Heat detections
41
in a single hotspot: 25 MW
Energy released
116MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

28 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 20 Jan27 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

202124252628

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

This area had burned before

12% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 251 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Edu where it started
    2,059 ha reached on 13 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 · 13 Jan 2026
After · 3 Feb 2026

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 · Copernicus

On 30 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 142 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 104: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak142 µg/m³
Days over the guideline13 days
PM10540 µg/m³
Optical depth1.42
18192021222324252627282930
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 41Every 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 Edu fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 20 January 2026 and 27 January 2026: 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 2,047 hectares (20.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Edu (2,059 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

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.