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NG · Nigeria · –

Kabba/Bunu fire, December 2025 Kabba/Bunu, Lokoja

Out · last detection 5 Feb 2026, 12:47 UTC

The fire started on 31 December 2025 in Kabba/Bunu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 37 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 33,333 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

Number 5 in Nigeria in 2025, of 227.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Compare with…
Burnt area
33,333ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
37days
31 Dec 2025 – 5 Feb 2026
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
31 Dec
2025
Heat detections
1,059
in a single hotspot: 134 MW
Danger at start
35
High · FWI index
Average daily power
234MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 31 Dec5 Feb
5 Feb 2026

How it evolved, day by day

31 Dec 2025 · 195 MW · 4 1 Jan 2026 · 12 MW · 3 2 Jan 2026 · 28 MW · 5 3 Jan 2026 · 24 MW · 6 4 Jan 2026 · 466 MW · 43 5 Jan 2026 · 378 MW · 39 6 Jan 2026 · 352 MW · 60 7 Jan 2026 · 128 MW · 33 8 Jan 2026 · 43 MW · 10 9 Jan 2026 · 220 MW · 11 10 Jan 2026 · 208 MW · 31 11 Jan 2026 · 406 MW · 45 12 Jan 2026 · 627 MW · 108 13 Jan 2026 · 906 MW · 151 14 Jan 2026 · 124 MW · 27 15 Jan 2026 · 968 MW · 68 16 Jan 2026 · 338 MW · 65 17 Jan 2026 · 223 MW · 47 18 Jan 2026 · 72 MW · 13 20 Jan 2026 · 228 MW · 19 21 Jan 2026 · 210 MW · 16 22 Jan 2026 · 392 MW · 42 23 Jan 2026 · 187 MW · 45 24 Jan 2026 · 656 MW · 83 25 Jan 2026 · 132 MW · 30 26 Jan 2026 · 64 MW · 14 27 Jan 2026 · 3 MW · 2 28 Jan 2026 · 45 MW · 7 29 Jan 2026 · 51 MW · 17 31 Jan 2026 · 9 MW · 3 2 Feb 2026 · 7 MW · 1 4 Feb 2026 · 9 MW · 4 5 Feb 2026 · 21 MW · 7
31 Dec 7 Jan 15 Jan 22 Jan 29 Jan

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

Fire front film How it spread from one satellite pass to the next (56 passes) and with what wind. Watch the film

The weather it burned in

39°high
32km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,538 ha in 2016, 975 ha in 2017, 570 ha in 2020, 2,123 ha in 2024, 1,580 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,795 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 21% of the area of London (333 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

  1. Kabba/Bunu where it started
    21,248 ha reached on 31 Dec
    8.0 %
  2. 14,644 ha reached on 31 Dec
    4.6 %

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 area8.3 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 8.3 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 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)

Started with 60 days without rain: 42 % of the area in Nigeria

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
31 Dec 36.1 °C 32 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
1 Jan 37.7 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
2 Jan 36.6 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Jan 36.2 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Jan 37.4 °C 21 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
5 Jan 36.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
6 Jan 36.7 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
7 Jan 36.0 °C 28 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
8 Jan 36.2 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
9 Jan 36.6 °C 27 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Jan 36.0 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Jan 34.5 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jan 34.0 °C 22 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
13 Jan 35.4 °C 24 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
14 Jan 34.6 °C 25 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
15 Jan 34.6 °C 29 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
16 Jan 35.9 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
17 Jan 35.7 °C 27 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
18 Jan 36.5 °C 26 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
19 Jan 36.5 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 40
20 Jan 36.8 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
21 Jan 37.2 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
22 Jan 35.3 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
23 Jan 36.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Jan 36.1 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
25 Jan 37.4 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
26 Jan 36.5 °C 16 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
27 Jan 35.0 °C 31 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
28 Jan 35.9 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
29 Jan 37.0 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
30 Jan 36.2 °C 22 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Jan 37.2 °C 21 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
1 Feb 38.2 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Feb 37.8 °C 25 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Feb 37.7 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 46
4 Feb 36.3 °C 26 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
5 Feb 38.7 °C 23 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
6 Feb after 36.7 °C 28 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Feb after 37.8 °C 20 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
8 Feb after 37.8 °C 23 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Feb after 38.3 °C 26 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
10 Feb after 36.2 °C 32 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
11 Feb after 37.7 °C 26 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Feb after 36.8 °C 28 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Feb after 36.8 °C 26 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Feb after 35.7 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
15 Feb after 37.3 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 24 Dec 2025
After · 12 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 14 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 126 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 104: 7.0 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak126 µg/m³
Days over the guideline34 days
PM10440 µg/m³
Optical depth1.17
29 Dec5 Jan12 Jan19 Jan26 Jan
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 · 1,059Every 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 Kabba/Bunu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 31 December 2025 to 5 February 2026 (37 days). The perimeter dates it from 31 December 2025 to 29 January 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 33,333 hectares (333.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kabba/Bunu (21,248 ha, 8.0 %); Lokoja (14,644 ha, 4.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 32 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, class Extreme.
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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Area: 35,665 → 33,333 ha.
  2. Last day with fire: 29 January 2026 → 5 February 2026.

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 31 December 2025 to 29 January 2026. 1,059 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.