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Mashegu fire, 5 January 2021 Mashegu

Out · last detection 1 Feb 2021, 12:54 UTC

The fire started on 5 January 2021 in Mashegu, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 27 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,405 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 30th largest in Niger since 2016 (of 271 with a page). Number 8 in Nigeria in 2021, of 184.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Mashegu · 2016Mashegu · 2016Mashegu · 2025Mashegu · 2021

Burnt area
9,405ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
27days
5 Jan 2021 – 31 Jan 2021
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
5 Jan
2021
Heat detections
580
in a single hotspot: 34 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
142MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Jan31 Jan
1 Feb 2021

How it evolved, day by day

5 Jan 2021 · 18 MW · 5 9 Jan 2021 · 17 MW · 2 10 Jan 2021 · 82 MW · 11 11 Jan 2021 · 167 MW · 17 12 Jan 2021 · 272 MW · 33 13 Jan 2021 · 140 MW · 17 14 Jan 2021 · 107 MW · 20 15 Jan 2021 · 184 MW · 15 16 Jan 2021 · 304 MW · 48 17 Jan 2021 · 164 MW · 33 18 Jan 2021 · 130 MW · 30 19 Jan 2021 · 55 MW · 17 20 Jan 2021 · 221 MW · 63 21 Jan 2021 · 270 MW · 53 22 Jan 2021 · 232 MW · 55 23 Jan 2021 · 29 MW · 25 24 Jan 2021 · 186 MW · 26 25 Jan 2021 · 170 MW · 19 26 Jan 2021 · 352 MW · 27 27 Jan 2021 · 78 MW · 11 28 Jan 2021 · 48 MW · 6 30 Jan 2021 · 126 MW · 25 31 Jan 2021 · 51 MW · 18 1 Feb 2021 · 15 MW · 4
5 Jan 12 Jan 16 Jan 20 Jan 24 Jan 26 Jan 28 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

37°high
36km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

31% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,162 ha in 2016, 38 ha in 2017, 333 ha in 2019, 692 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,899 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.9% of the area of London (94 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

  1. Mashegu where it started
    9,467 ha reached on 5 Jan
    1.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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.

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

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
5 Jan 37.4 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
6 Jan 37.2 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
7 Jan 36.7 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Jan 36.2 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Jan 37.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Jan 36.5 °C 19 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
11 Jan 36.2 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
12 Jan 35.4 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
13 Jan 35.5 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Jan 35.3 °C 17 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
15 Jan 34.9 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Jan 34.9 °C 16 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Jan 35.0 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
18 Jan 34.9 °C 18 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
19 Jan 34.6 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
20 Jan 33.4 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
21 Jan 33.5 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
22 Jan 32.8 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Jan 33.0 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Jan 35.3 °C 17 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Jan 35.5 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jan 36.3 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Jan 36.1 °C 15 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Jan 36.3 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Jan 35.6 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
30 Jan 35.4 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Jan 35.0 °C 16 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Feb after 35.5 °C 16 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Feb after 35.6 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
3 Feb after 36.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Feb after 35.9 °C 15 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Feb after 36.1 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
6 Feb after 35.3 °C 21 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Feb after 36.4 °C 18 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Feb after 36.0 °C 14 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
9 Feb after 36.9 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
10 Feb after 37.3 °C 17 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Dec 2020
After · 7 Feb 2021

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 · 580Every 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 Mashegu fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 5 January 2021 to 31 January 2021 (27 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 January 2021 to 28 January 2021.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,405 hectares (94.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Mashegu (9,467 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 28 January 2021 → 31 January 2021.
  2. Start date: 12 January 2021 → 5 January 2021.

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?

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 January 2021 to 28 January 2021. 580 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.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 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.