How long did the Etsako West fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 December 2025 to 15 January 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2025 to 8 January 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,375 hectares (33.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etsako West (3,218 ha, 3.6 %); Etsako Central (179 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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.

NG · Nigeria · 2025-12-24 → 2026-01-15

Etsako West fire, December 2025 Etsako West, Etsako Central

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2026, 12:22 UTC

The fire started on 24 December 2025 in Etsako West, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,375 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 31th largest in Edo since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 118 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Etsako West · 2022 Etsako West · 2021 Etsako West · 2022 Esan West · 2023

Burnt area: 3,375ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 24 Dec 2025 – 15 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 24 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 93; in a single hotspot: 32 MW
Danger at start: 31; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 27MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Dec15 Jan

Play back 16 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

28 Dec 1 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

39°high

33km/h · peak gust

21%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 47 ha in 2016, 548 ha in 2017, 1,472 ha in 2018, 1,907 ha in 2020, 2,121 ha in 2021, 4,763 ha in 2022, 2,180 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,118 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.1% of the area of London (34 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

Etsako West where it started

3,218 ha reached on 28 Dec

3.6 %
Etsako Central

179 ha reached on 29 Dec

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2025

Built-up area0.49 ha

Residents≈ 50

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.49 hectares of built-up land and about 50 residents (GHSL 2025, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

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)
28 Dec	37.8 °C	33 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
29 Dec	36.6 °C	48 %	28 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 16
30 Dec	37.3 °C	37 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
31 Dec	38.4 °C	30 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
1 Jan	39.1 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.4 mm	High 33
2 Jan	36.8 °C	42 %	33 km/h	0.5 mm	High 31
3 Jan	37.8 °C	32 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
4 Jan	39.0 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
5 Jan	37.7 °C	29 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
6 Jan	38.3 °C	22 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
7 Jan	37.5 °C	33 %	32 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 38
8 Jan	38.4 °C	31 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
9 Jan	38.1 °C	31 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
10 Jan	37.6 °C	28 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
11 Jan	36.0 °C	29 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
12 Jan	36.0 °C	29 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
13 Jan	37.0 °C	28 %	21 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
14 Jan	35.9 °C	31 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
15 Jan	37.0 °C	30 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
16 Jan after	37.6 °C	25 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Jan after	38.7 °C	27 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
18 Jan after	38.8 °C	29 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Dec 2025

After · 22 Jan 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 5 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 139 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 68: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak139 µg/m³

Days over the guideline17 days

PM10235 µg/m³

Optical depth0.90

WHO 15

2627282930311234567891011

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 · 93Every 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 Etsako West fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 December 2025 to 15 January 2026 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2025 to 8 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,375 hectares (33.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Etsako West (3,218 ha, 3.6 %); Etsako Central (179 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.1 °C, humidity dropped to 21 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, 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 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 January 2026 → 15 January 2026.
27 October 2026 Start date: 28 December 2025 → 24 December 2025.

RSS Changes to this page

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?

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

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 28 December 2025 to 8 January 2026. 93 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

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