How long did the Gummi fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 December 2024 to 19 December 2024 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 December 2024 to 16 December 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,139 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Gummi (2,152 ha, 0.7 %).

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 · 2024-12-12 → 2024-12-19

Gummi fire, 12 December 2024 Gummi

Out · last detection 16 Dec 2024, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2024 in Gummi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,139 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 183th largest in Zamfara since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 105 in Nigeria in 2024, of 120.

The power measured by the satellite is low (11.0 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Gummi · 2020 Gummi · 2021 Gummi · 2025 Gummi · 2021

Burnt area: 2,139ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 8days; 12 Dec 2024 – 19 Dec 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 12 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 50; in a single hotspot: 11 MW
Average daily power: 47MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec19 Dec

Play back 16 Dec 2024

How it evolved, day by day

12 Dec 13 Dec 14 Dec 15 Dec 16 Dec

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

This area had burned before

86% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 31 ha in 2019, 1,226 ha in 2020, 821 ha in 2021, 619 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,831 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (21 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

Gummi where it started

2,152 ha reached on 12 Dec

0.7 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 5 Dec 2024

After · 26 Dec 2024

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 15 December 2024 the air beside the fire reached 307 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 244: 16 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak307 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM102,317 µg/m³

Optical depth1.71

WHO 15

10111213141516171819

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 · 50Every 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 Gummi fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 December 2024 to 19 December 2024 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 December 2024 to 16 December 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,139 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Gummi (2,152 ha, 0.7 %).
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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?

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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.

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 12 December 2024 to 16 December 2024. 50 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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