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Ngala fire, 18 October 2023 Ngala

Out · last detection 24 Oct 2023, 11:59 UTC

The fire started on 18 October 2023 in Ngala, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,227 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 365th largest in Borno since 2016 (of 461 with a page). Number 134 in Nigeria in 2023, of 161.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ngala · 2025Marte · 2017Marte · 2025Marte · 2021

Burnt area
2,227ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
18 Oct 2023 – 23 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Oct
2023
Heat detections
58
in a single hotspot: 30 MW
Average daily power
78MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Oct23 Oct
24 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

18 Oct 2023 · 75 MW · 11 19 Oct 2023 · 42 MW · 3 20 Oct 2023 · 334 MW · 32 21 Oct 2023 · 21 MW · 3 22 Oct 2023 · 14 MW · 3 23 Oct 2023 · 52 MW · 4 24 Oct 2023 · 11 MW · 2
18 Oct 19 Oct 20 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 23 Oct 24 Oct

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

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (22 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. Ngala where it started
    2,242 ha reached on 18 Oct
    1.1 %

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 · 11 Oct 2023
After · 30 Oct 2023

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 · Copernicus

On 25 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 99 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak99 µg/m³
Days over the guideline10 days
PM10234 µg/m³
Optical depth0.69
1617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 58Every 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 Ngala fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 October 2023 and 23 October 2023: 6 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 2,227 hectares (22.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Ngala (2,242 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
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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 58 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.