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Kebbe fire, December 2025 Kebbe, Gummi, Wasagu-Danko

Out · last detection 8 Jan 2026, 13:13 UTC

The fire started on 29 December 2025 in Kebbe, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,818 hectares from heat detections, spread across 4 municipalities.

It is the 8th largest in Sokoto since 2016 (of 47 with a page). Number 102 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kebbe · 2022Gummi · 2025Gummi · 2022Gummi · 2021

Burnt area
3,818ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
29 Dec 2025 – 8 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
4
local government areas
Started on
29 Dec
2025
Heat detections
96
in a single hotspot: 192 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
225MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 29 Dec8 Jan
8 Jan 2026

How it evolved, day by day

29 Dec 2025 · 11 MW · 2 1 Jan 2026 · 3 MW · 1 4 Jan 2026 · 85 MW · 4 5 Jan 2026 · 35 MW · 6 6 Jan 2026 · 1,358 MW · 72 7 Jan 2026 · 58 MW · 5 8 Jan 2026 · 27 MW · 6
29 Dec 1 Jan 4 Jan 5 Jan 6 Jan 7 Jan 8 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

38°high
41km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

37% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 139 ha in 2021, 1,332 ha in 2022.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 2.4% of the area of London (38 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. Kebbe where it started
    2,333 ha reached on 29 Dec
    1.0 %
  2. Gummi
    1,475 ha reached on 4 Jan
    0.5 %
  3. Wasagu-Danko
    26 ha reached on 6 Jan
    0.0 %
  4. Fakai
    6 ha
    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 area4.3 ha
Residents≈ 900

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.3 hectares of built-up land and about 900 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)
29 Dec 38.5 °C 21 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
30 Dec 37.2 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
31 Dec 37.7 °C 19 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Jan 37.6 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
2 Jan 38.2 °C 20 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Jan 37.3 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Jan 37.1 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
5 Jan 36.6 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jan 37.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
7 Jan 36.2 °C 20 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
8 Jan 35.2 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
9 Jan after 35.6 °C 13 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
10 Jan after 32.6 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
11 Jan after 33.7 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
12 Jan after 34.8 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
13 Jan after 34.8 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
14 Jan after 33.8 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
15 Jan after 33.4 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
16 Jan after 35.5 °C 20 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
17 Jan after 36.4 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Jan after 36.8 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 22 Dec 2025
After · 15 Jan 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 10 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 171 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 137: 9.1 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak171 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10846 µg/m³
Optical depth1.13
27282930311234567891011
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 · 96Every 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 Kebbe fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 29 December 2025 and 8 January 2026: 11 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 3,818 hectares (38.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 4 municipalities: Kebbe (2,333 ha, 1.0 %); Gummi (1,475 ha, 0.5 %); Wasagu-Danko (26 ha, 0.0 %); Fakai (6 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 41 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 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?

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. 96 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.