How long did the Toungo fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2025 to 6 February 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2025 to 31 January 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,364 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Toungo (4,710 ha, 0.8 %); Gashaka (689 ha, 0.1 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

NG · Nigeria · 2025-01-15 → 2025-02-06

Toungo fire, 15 January 2025 Toungo, Gashaka

Out · last detection 6 Feb 2025, 13:07 UTC

The fire started on 15 January 2025 in Toungo, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,364 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Adamawa since 2016 (of 37 with a page). Number 67 in Nigeria in 2025, of 294.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Toungo · 2019 Gashaka · 2025 Gashaka · 2026 Gashaka · 2025

Burnt area: 5,364ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 23days; 15 Jan 2025 – 6 Feb 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 15 Jan; 2025
Heat detections: 268; in a single hotspot: 116 MW
Danger at start: 36; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 92MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Jan6 Feb

Play back 6 Feb 2025

How it evolved, day by day

15 Jan 18 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 26 Jan 29 Jan 1 Feb 4 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

38°high

31km/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

50% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,837 ha in 2019, 855 ha in 2022.

1,837 ha Toungo fire, January 2019 2,467 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.4% of the area of London (54 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

Toungo where it started

4,710 ha reached on 15 Jan

0.8 %
Gashaka

689 ha reached on 18 Jan

0.1 %

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 2025

Built-up area2.3 ha

Residents≈ 450

Inside the perimeter there were about 2.3 hectares of built-up land and about 450 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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	Danger (FWI)
22 Jan	37.9 °C	22 %	18 km/h	High 36
23 Jan	38.0 °C	16 %	22 km/h	Very high 42
24 Jan	38.2 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Very high 42
25 Jan	37.2 °C	16 %	20 km/h	Very high 43
26 Jan	37.8 °C	17 %	20 km/h	Very high 44
27 Jan	37.1 °C	17 %	20 km/h	Very high 42
28 Jan	36.9 °C	18 %	22 km/h	Very high 44
29 Jan	36.8 °C	17 %	28 km/h	Very high 45
30 Jan	37.0 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
31 Jan	36.3 °C	16 %	31 km/h	Very high 47
1 Feb	37.1 °C	14 %	28 km/h	Very high 46
2 Feb	38.5 °C	17 %	24 km/h	Very high 47
3 Feb	39.5 °C	15 %	24 km/h	Very high 44
4 Feb	38.7 °C	16 %	27 km/h	Very high 45
5 Feb	37.6 °C	14 %	32 km/h	Extreme 51
6 Feb	39.4 °C	12 %	17 km/h	Very high 46
7 Feb after	38.4 °C	15 %	18 km/h	Very high 46
8 Feb after	40.0 °C	15 %	19 km/h	Very high 46
9 Feb after	39.8 °C	15 %	20 km/h	Very high 46
10 Feb after	39.8 °C	15 %	20 km/h	Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 8 Jan 2025

After · 13 Feb 2025

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 2 February 2025 the air beside the fire reached 114 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 88: 5.8 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak114 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10300 µg/m³

Optical depth0.72

WHO 15

202122232425262728293031123

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 · 268Every 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 Toungo fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 January 2025 to 6 February 2025 (23 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 January 2025 to 31 January 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,364 hectares (53.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Toungo (4,710 ha, 0.8 %); Gashaka (689 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 31 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 31 January 2025 → 6 February 2025.
27 October 2026 Start date: 22 January 2025 → 15 January 2025.

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 22 January 2025 to 31 January 2025. 268 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 2025, 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.

Where it burned