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Pategi fire, 12 January 2018 Pategi, Yagba East

Out · last detection 23 Jan 2018, 13:13 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2018 in Pategi, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,750 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 15th largest in Kwara since 2016 (of 35 with a page). Number 29 in Nigeria in 2018, of 53.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pategi · 2026Pategi · 2016Pategi · 2026Pategi · 2026

Burnt area
2,750ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
12 Jan 2018 – 23 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
12 Jan
2018
Heat detections
98
in a single hotspot: 33 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
62MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan23 Jan
23 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jan 2018 · 80 MW · 15 13 Jan 2018 · 85 MW · 14 14 Jan 2018 · 191 MW · 35 15 Jan 2018 · 25 MW · 8 17 Jan 2018 · 63 MW · 9 18 Jan 2018 · 56 MW · 8 20 Jan 2018 · 3 MW · 1 21 Jan 2018 · 44 MW · 6 23 Jan 2018 · 10 MW · 2
12 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan 23 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

36°high
28km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

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

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 1.7% of the area of London (28 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. Pategi where it started
    2,716 ha reached on 12 Jan
    0.9 %
  2. Yagba East
    50 ha reached on 20 Jan
    0.0 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area0.22 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.22 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (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)
12 Jan 35.5 °C 12 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Jan 34.5 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
14 Jan 34.0 °C 14 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Jan 35.3 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
16 Jan 34.8 °C 19 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Jan 35.2 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
18 Jan 35.6 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Jan 35.2 °C 14 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Jan 35.8 °C 13 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Jan 35.9 °C 8 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
22 Jan 36.7 °C 8 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Jan 36.2 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Jan after 33.1 °C 12 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Jan after 34.1 °C 10 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Jan after 35.8 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Jan after 35.4 °C 13 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jan 2018
After · 30 Jan 2018

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 · 98Every 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 Pategi fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 12 January 2018 to 23 January 2018 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 January 2018 to 17 January 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,750 hectares (27.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Pategi (2,716 ha, 0.9 %); Yagba East (50 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 28 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 45, class Very high.
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 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.

Report an error
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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 12 January 2018 to 17 January 2018. 98 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.