How long did the Gashaka fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 January 2022 and 28 January 2022: 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 3,516 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gashaka (3,543 ha, 0.4 %); Bali (0 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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 · 2022-01-21 → 2022-01-28

Gashaka fire, 21 January 2022 Gashaka, Bali

Out · last detection 28 Jan 2022, 00:40 UTC

The fire started on 21 January 2022 in Gashaka, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,516 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 35th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 36 in Nigeria in 2022, of 125.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gashaka · 2020 Gashaka · 2026 Bali · 2026 Gashaka · 2025

Burnt area: 3,516ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 21 Jan 2022 – 28 Jan 2022
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 21 Jan; 2022
Heat detections: 154; in a single hotspot: 90 MW
Danger at start: 44; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 128MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Jan28 Jan

Play back 28 Jan 2022

How it evolved, day by day

21 Jan 23 Jan 25 Jan 27 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

36°high

32km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

58% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 780 ha in 2018, 75 ha in 2019, 1,735 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,052 ha that had burned before.

12 ha Gashaka fire, January 2020 2,096 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 2.2% of the area of London (35 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

Gashaka where it started

3,543 ha reached on 20 Jan

0.4 %
Bali

0 ha

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
21 Jan	33.9 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 44
22 Jan	35.6 °C	16 %	26 km/h	Very high 46
23 Jan	34.2 °C	15 %	29 km/h	Very high 46
24 Jan	34.6 °C	12 %	32 km/h	Very high 47
25 Jan	33.6 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 46
26 Jan	34.0 °C	12 %	28 km/h	Very high 44
27 Jan	34.7 °C	11 %	25 km/h	Very high 45
28 Jan	34.2 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Very high 45
29 Jan after	33.9 °C	15 %	29 km/h	Very high 48
30 Jan after	34.1 °C	12 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
31 Jan after	33.7 °C	10 %	28 km/h	Very high 47
1 Feb after	33.6 °C	15 %	26 km/h	Very high 47
2 Feb after	35.2 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Very high 48
3 Feb after	35.1 °C	13 %	29 km/h	Very high 48
4 Feb after	34.0 °C	11 %	28 km/h	Very high 48
5 Feb after	35.0 °C	11 %	24 km/h	Very high 46
6 Feb after	36.3 °C	13 %	27 km/h	Very high 49
7 Feb after	36.6 °C	12 %	25 km/h	Very high 49

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 14 Jan 2022

After · 4 Feb 2022

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 · 154Every 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 Gashaka fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 21 January 2022 and 28 January 2022: 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 3,516 hectares (35.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Gashaka (3,543 ha, 0.4 %); Bali (0 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 154 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.

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