How long did the Mariga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2024 to 14 January 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2024 to 8 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,361 hectares (23.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Mariga (2,378 ha, 0.4 %).

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 · 2024-12-26 → 2025-01-14

Mariga fire, 26 December 2024 Mariga

Out · last detection 14 Jan 2025, 13:39 UTC

The fire started on 26 December 2024 in Mariga, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,361 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 217th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 79 in Nigeria in 2024, of 118.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mariga · 2023 Mariga · 2025 Mariga · 2025 Mariga · 2026

Burnt area: 2,361ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 26 Dec 2024 – 14 Jan 2025
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 26 Dec; 2024
Heat detections: 115; in a single hotspot: 51 MW
Average daily power: 40MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Dec14 Jan

Play back 14 Jan 2025

How it evolved, day by day

26 Dec 31 Dec 2 Jan 4 Jan 7 Jan 10 Jan 14 Jan

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

This area had burned before

74% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 370 ha in 2021, 24 ha in 2022, 1,649 ha in 2023. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,752 ha that had burned before.

740 ha Mariga fire, December 2023 13,270 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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

Mariga where it started

2,378 ha reached on 26 Dec

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 2025

Built-up area1.6 ha

Residents≈ 250

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.6 hectares of built-up land and about 250 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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Dec 2024

After · 21 Jan 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 11 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 234 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 145: 9.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak234 µg/m³

Days over the guideline16 days

PM101,270 µg/m³

Optical depth1.48

WHO 15

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 · 115Every 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 Mariga fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2024 to 14 January 2025 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 December 2024 to 8 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,361 hectares (23.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Mariga (2,378 ha, 0.4 %).
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 January 2025 → 14 January 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 29 December 2024 → 26 December 2024.

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?

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 29 December 2024 to 8 January 2025. 115 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
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