How long did the Marte fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2019 and 14 November 2019: 1 day 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 2,056 hectares (20.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Marte (2,069 ha, 1.0 %).

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 · 2019-11-14 → 2019-11-14

Marte fire, 14 November 2019 Marte

Out · last detection 14 Nov 2019, 11:58 UTC

The fire started on 14 November 2019 in Marte, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,056 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 437th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 101 in Nigeria in 2019, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Marte · 2017 Marte · 2021 Monguno · 2017 Mafa · 2020

Burnt area: 2,056ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 1day; 14 Nov 2019 – 14 Nov 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 14 Nov; 2019
Heat detections: 54; in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Average daily power: 684MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Nov14 Nov

How it evolved, day by day

14 Nov 2019 · 684 MW · 49

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

This area had burned before

42% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 348 ha in 2016, 539 ha in 2017, 94 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 863 ha that had burned before.

539 ha Marte fire, October 2017 13,232 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.3% of the area of London (21 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

Marte where it started

2,069 ha reached on 14 Nov

1.0 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Nov 2019

After · 21 Nov 2019

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.

Detections table · 54Every 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 Marte fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 November 2019 and 14 November 2019: 1 day 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 2,056 hectares (20.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Marte (2,069 ha, 1.0 %).
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 54 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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