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Marte fire, 22 October 2018 Marte, Mafa

Out · last detection 25 Oct 2018, 01:10 UTC

The fire started on 22 October 2018 in Marte, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,084 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 423th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 54 in Nigeria in 2018, of 63.

Burnt area
2,084ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
22 Oct 2018 – 24 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
22 Oct
2018
Heat detections
48
in a single hotspot: 45 MW
Energy released
429MW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

25 Oct 2018
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Oct24 Oct

How it evolved, day by day

232425

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

This area had burned before

46% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 360 ha in 2016, 711 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 955 ha that had burned before.

What happened to each town

  1. Marte where it started
    1,828 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.9 %
  2. Mafa
    268 ha reached on 23 Oct
    0.1 %

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 · 15 Oct 2018
After · 31 Oct 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 · 48Every 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 Marte fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 22 October 2018 and 24 October 2018: 3 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 2,084 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Marte (1,828 ha, 0.9 %); Mafa (268 ha, 0.1 %).
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.