How long did the Kajuru fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2025 and 1 December 2025: 18 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 7,789 hectares (77.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kajuru (7,797 ha, 3.5 %); Kachia (38 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 39 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 · 2025-11-14 → 2025-12-01

Kajuru fire, November 2025 Kajuru, Kachia

Out · last detection 2 Dec 2025, 13:05 UTC

The fire started on 14 November 2025 in Kajuru, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,789 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Kaduna since 2016 (of 93 with a page). Number 34 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kachia · 2021 Kachia · 2020 Kachia · 2020 Kachia · 2026

Burnt area: 7,789ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 14 Nov 2025 – 1 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 14 Nov; 2025
Heat detections: 174; in a single hotspot: 85 MW
Danger at start: 30; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 96MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Nov1 Dec

Play back 2 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

15 Nov 18 Nov 21 Nov 26 Nov 28 Nov 29 Nov 2 Dec

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

39km/h · peak gust

18%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

40% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,211 ha in 2020, 1,073 ha in 2021, 771 ha in 2023, 968 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,134 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.9% of the area of London (78 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

Kajuru where it started

7,797 ha reached on 15 Nov

3.5 %
Kachia

38 ha reached on 20 Nov

0.0 %

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 area0.35 ha

Residents≈ 80

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.35 hectares of built-up land and about 80 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	Danger (FWI)
14 Nov	33.1 °C	28 %	34 km/h	High 30
15 Nov	33.3 °C	24 %	38 km/h	High 33
16 Nov	32.5 °C	23 %	38 km/h	High 34
17 Nov	32.1 °C	24 %	35 km/h	High 33
18 Nov	33.3 °C	28 %	28 km/h	High 30
19 Nov	34.1 °C	27 %	26 km/h	High 30
20 Nov	34.6 °C	25 %	31 km/h	High 32
21 Nov	34.7 °C	24 %	32 km/h	High 34
22 Nov	33.3 °C	22 %	31 km/h	High 34
23 Nov	34.5 °C	18 %	23 km/h	High 35
24 Nov	33.8 °C	18 %	34 km/h	High 38
25 Nov	34.0 °C	22 %	35 km/h	Very high 39
26 Nov	34.9 °C	23 %	32 km/h	High 38
27 Nov	35.1 °C	27 %	38 km/h	Very high 39
28 Nov	35.7 °C	23 %	39 km/h	Very high 40
29 Nov	35.7 °C	23 %	35 km/h	Very high 39
30 Nov	34.8 °C	20 %	36 km/h	Very high 41
1 Dec	35.1 °C	19 %	34 km/h	Very high 40
2 Dec after	34.1 °C	29 %	21 km/h	High 35
3 Dec after	35.1 °C	25 %	24 km/h	High 35
4 Dec after	34.4 °C	28 %	21 km/h	High 35
5 Dec after	34.8 °C	29 %	21 km/h	High 36
6 Dec after	34.3 °C	27 %	31 km/h	Very high 39
7 Dec after	33.2 °C	24 %	32 km/h	Very high 39
8 Dec after	32.7 °C	25 %	31 km/h	Very high 40
9 Dec after	32.1 °C	29 %	32 km/h	High 38
10 Dec after	31.3 °C	28 %	27 km/h	High 36
11 Dec after	33.0 °C	29 %	24 km/h	High 36

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Nov 2025

After · 8 Dec 2025

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 1 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 100 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 67: 4.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak100 µg/m³

Days over the guideline23 days

PM10510 µg/m³

Optical depth0.72

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223242526272829301234

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 · 174Every 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 Kajuru fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2025 and 1 December 2025: 18 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 7,789 hectares (77.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kajuru (7,797 ha, 3.5 %); Kachia (38 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 39 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 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.

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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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 174 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