Marte fire, October 2024 Marte
The fire started on 28 October 2024 in Marte, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,335 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 327th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 81 in Nigeria in 2024, of 118.
The power measured by the satellite is low (19.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.
- Burnt area
- 2,335ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 3days
- 28 Oct 2024 – 30 Oct 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- local government areas
- Started on
- 28 Oct
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 56
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Energy released
- 468MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 460 ha in 2016, 1,305 ha in 2017, 1,082 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,153 ha that had burned before.
- 1,260 ha Marte fire, October 2017 13,232 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 460 ha Marte fire, November 2016 4,557 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 46 ha Monguno fire, October 2017 14,869 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
What happened to each town
-
Marte where it started2,350 ha reached on 28 Oct1.1 %
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.
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 31 October 2024 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 30: 2.0 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 · 56Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 13,232 haMarte13 October 2017 · 9 days · 8 km away
- 14,869 haMonguno10 October 2017 · 10 days · 17 km away
- 6,317 haMarte5 November 2025 · 3 days · 20 km away
- 7,169 haNgalaMarch 2025 · 8 days · 24 km away
- 47,830 haKukawa 28 September 2026 · 27 days · 27 km away
- 6,736 haMarte27 October 2025 · 4 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Marte fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 October 2024 and 30 October 2024: 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 2,335 hectares (23.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Marte (2,350 ha, 1.1 %).
- 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
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.