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Kurmi fire, January 2026 Kurmi

Out · last detection 29 Jan 2026, 13:18 UTC

The fire started on 18 January 2026 in Kurmi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,418 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 102th largest in Taraba since 2016 (of 160 with a page). Number 180 in Nigeria in 2026, of 258.

Burnt area
2,418ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
18 Jan 2026 – 28 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Jan
2026
Heat detections
49
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Energy released
289MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

29 Jan 2026
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Jan28 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

18202124252629

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

This area had burned before

97% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 401 ha in 2017, 25 ha in 2020, 339 ha in 2021, 1,840 ha in 2023, 2,229 ha in 2024, 2,015 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,341 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Kurmi where it started
    2,433 ha reached on 16 Jan
    0.5 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Jan 2026
After · 4 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 29 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 113 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 96: 6.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak113 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM10313 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
16171819202122232425262728293031
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 · 49Every 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 Kurmi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 January 2026 and 28 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 2,418 hectares (24.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kurmi (2,433 ha, 0.5 %).
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

Satellite cross-check

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.

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.