How long did the Maru fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2017 to 15 January 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 January 2018 to 8 January 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,677 hectares (46.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Maru (4,695 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.

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 · 2017-12-26 → 2018-01-15

Maru fire, 26 December 2017 Maru

Out · last detection 13 Jan 2018, 13:01 UTC

The fire started on 26 December 2017 in Maru, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,677 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 38th largest in Zamfara since 2016 (of 210 with a page). Number 19 in Nigeria in 2017, of 155.

The power measured by the satellite is low (18.9 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maru · 2016 Maru · 2016 Maru · 2020 Mariga · 2025

Burnt area: 4,677ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 21days; 26 Dec 2017 – 15 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 26 Dec; 2017
Heat detections: 194; in a single hotspot: 19 MW
Danger at start: 53; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 63MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 26 Dec15 Jan

Play back 13 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

30 Dec 2 Jan 5 Jan 6 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

32°high

49km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

89% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,342 ha in 2016, 46 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 4,156 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3% of the area of London (47 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

Maru where it started

4,695 ha reached on 30 Dec

0.6 %

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.

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Danger (FWI)
2 Jan	29.0 °C	15 %	43 km/h	Extreme 53
3 Jan	29.3 °C	16 %	43 km/h	Extreme 53
4 Jan	29.9 °C	9 %	49 km/h	Extreme 58
5 Jan	30.0 °C	10 %	45 km/h	Extreme 55
6 Jan	30.9 °C	14 %	35 km/h	Extreme 51
7 Jan	32.4 °C	15 %	28 km/h	Very high 48
8 Jan	32.4 °C	16 %	29 km/h	Very high 47
9 Jan	32.8 °C	11 %	34 km/h	Very high 50
10 Jan	32.7 °C	11 %	35 km/h	Extreme 51
11 Jan	32.1 °C	13 %	38 km/h	Extreme 53
12 Jan	32.5 °C	11 %	33 km/h	Extreme 51
13 Jan	31.3 °C	10 %	34 km/h	Extreme 53
14 Jan	31.0 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 56
15 Jan	32.1 °C	13 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
16 Jan after	32.1 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Jan after	32.2 °C	12 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
18 Jan after	32.8 °C	12 %	37 km/h	Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 19 Dec 2017

After · 22 Jan 2018

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 · 194Every 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 Maru fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 26 December 2017 to 15 January 2018 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 January 2018 to 8 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 4,677 hectares (46.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Maru (4,695 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 32.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, class Extreme.
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?

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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 2 January 2018 to 8 January 2018. 194 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.

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