Kukawa fire, 15 October 2026 Kukawa
The fire started on 15 October 2026 in Kukawa, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,400 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 95th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 495 with a page). Number 85 in Nigeria in 2026, of 319.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kukawa · 2018Kukawa · 2021Abadam · 2017Kukawa · 2016
Is it still active?
Satellites detected fire on 4 Nov 2026, 13:16 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.
- Burnt area
- 4,400ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 21days
- 15 Oct 2026 – 4 Nov 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 15 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 185
- in a single hotspot: 214 MW
- Danger at start
- 68
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 209MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
73% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,770 ha in 2016, 2,592 ha in 2017, 2,215 ha in 2018, 106 ha in 2019, 1,731 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,204 ha that had burned before.
- 2,215 ha Kukawa fire, October 2018 32,284 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,731 ha Kukawa fire, October 2021 2,723 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,098 ha Abadam fire, October 2017 39,930 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 870 ha Kukawa fire, September 2016 5,365 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 755 ha Abadam fire, October 2016 31,926 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 69 ha Kukawa fire, October 2016 2,978 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Kukawa where it started4,432 ha reached on 15 Oct0.9 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.20 hectares of built-up land and about 50 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 15 Oct | 40.0 °C | 9 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 16 Oct | 39.8 °C | 13 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 17 Oct | 38.8 °C | 12 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 18 Oct | 39.7 °C | 10 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 19 Oct | 39.4 °C | 10 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 20 Oct | 39.0 °C | 8 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 21 Oct | 39.0 °C | 10 % | 46 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 22 Oct | 39.0 °C | 8 % | 48 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 23 Oct | 37.7 °C | 10 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 70 |
| 24 Oct | 37.7 °C | 6 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 66 |
| 25 Oct | 38.2 °C | 7 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 26 Oct | 38.8 °C | 8 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 27 Oct | 39.4 °C | 9 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 28 Oct | 39.1 °C | 11 % | 47 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 73 |
| 29 Oct | 39.3 °C | 11 % | 44 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 70 |
| 30 Oct | 40.5 °C | 10 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 63 |
| 31 Oct | 41.5 °C | 11 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 1 Nov | 41.2 °C | 8 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 2 Nov | 40.6 °C | 6 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 3 Nov | 40.6 °C | 5 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 68 |
| 4 Nov | 41.5 °C | 7 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 96 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 50: 3.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 185Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 39,930 haAbadamOctober 2017 · 41 days · 5 km away
- 32,284 haKukawa7 October 2018 · 26 days · 13 km away
- 57,635 haKaya27 September 2016 · 44 days · 22 km away
- 31,926 haAbadamOctober 2016 · 48 days · 23 km away
- 43,877 haAbadam1 October 2021 · 44 days · 24 km away
- 42,926 haFouli2 October 2017 · 20 days · 27 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kukawa fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 October 2026 to 4 November 2026 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2026 to 3 November 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,400 hectares (44.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kukawa (4,432 ha, 0.9 %).
- Is the Kukawa fire still active?
- Yes: satellites detected fire on 4 Nov 2026, 13:16 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 41.5 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 50 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 73, 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 · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 26 October 2026.
- Area: 4,245 → 4,369 ha.
- Area: 3,569 → 4,245 ha.
- Area: 3,450 → 3,569 ha.
- Page published (3,450 ha).
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
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 22 October 2026 to 3 November 2026. 185 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.
- 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.
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.