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Kukawa fire, 23 October 2018 Kukawa, Abadam

Out · last detection 9 Nov 2018, 12:36 UTC

The fire started on 23 October 2018 in Kukawa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,972 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 203th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 464 with a page). Number 24 in Nigeria in 2018, of 63.

The power measured by the satellite is low (28.4 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: Abadam · 2016Kukawa · 2017Abadam · 2017Kukawa · 2018

Burnt area
2,972ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
23 Oct 2018 – 8 Nov 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
23 Oct
2018
Heat detections
153
in a single hotspot: 28 MW
Danger at start
84
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
108MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Oct8 Nov
9 Nov 2018

How it evolved, day by day

23 Oct 2018 · 5 MW · 1 24 Oct 2018 · 5 MW · 1 25 Oct 2018 · 12 MW · 3 30 Oct 2018 · 357 MW · 34 31 Oct 2018 · 102 MW · 9 1 Nov 2018 · 101 MW · 15 2 Nov 2018 · 269 MW · 29 3 Nov 2018 · 56 MW · 8 4 Nov 2018 · 239 MW · 18 5 Nov 2018 · 10 MW · 2 6 Nov 2018 · 164 MW · 13 7 Nov 2018 · 174 MW · 18 8 Nov 2018 · 13 MW · 1 9 Nov 2018 · 10 MW · 1
23 Oct 25 Oct 30 Oct 31 Oct 2 Nov 4 Nov 6 Nov 8 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
51km/h · peak gust
3%lowest humidity

It had gone 27 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

83% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,816 ha in 2016, 1,029 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,452 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (30 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. Kukawa where it started
    1,569 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.3 %
  2. Abadam
    1,423 ha reached on 24 Oct
    0.4 %

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 2020
Built-up area1.2 ha
Residents≈ 300

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.2 hectares of built-up land and about 300 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
30 Oct 39.9 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 84
31 Oct 39.0 °C 3 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
1 Nov 40.4 °C 3 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 70
2 Nov 40.1 °C 5 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
3 Nov 39.8 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
4 Nov 40.5 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
5 Nov 39.1 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
6 Nov 40.3 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
7 Nov 39.5 °C 8 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
8 Nov 38.2 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
9 Nov after 37.4 °C 7 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 86
10 Nov after 38.0 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
11 Nov after 38.9 °C 4 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
12 Nov after 38.3 °C 7 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
13 Nov after 37.8 °C 8 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
14 Nov after 36.5 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 76
15 Nov after 36.6 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
16 Nov after 36.3 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 16 Oct 2018
After · 15 Nov 2018

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 · 153Every 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 Kukawa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 October 2018 to 8 November 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 October 2018 to 6 November 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,972 hectares (29.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Kukawa (1,569 ha, 0.3 %); Abadam (1,423 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 3 % and gusts hit 51 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 84, class Very 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. Last day with fire: 6 November 2018 → 8 November 2018.
  2. Start date: 30 October 2018 → 23 October 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 October 2018 to 6 November 2018. 153 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 2020, 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.