How long did the Uhunmwonde fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 January 2016 to 9 February 2016 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 January 2016 to 2 February 2016.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,086 hectares (90.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Uhunmwonde (9,134 ha, 4.4 %); Esan West (12 ha, 0.0 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 2016-01-22 → 2016-02-09

Uhunmwonde fire, 22 January 2016 Uhunmwonde, Esan West

Out · last detection 10 Feb 2016, 12:42 UTC

The fire started on 22 January 2016 in Uhunmwonde, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,086 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 4th largest in Edo since 2016 (of 78 with a page). Number 5 in Nigeria in 2016, of 198.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Uhunmwonde · 2020 Uhunmwonde · 2023 Uhunmwonde · 2021 Iguegben · 2023

Burnt area: 9,086ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 22 Jan 2016 – 9 Feb 2016
Municipalities hit: 2; local government areas
Started on: 22 Jan; 2016
Heat detections: 413; in a single hotspot: 70 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 185MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Jan9 Feb

Play back 10 Feb 2016

How it evolved, day by day

22 Jan 25 Jan 28 Jan 31 Jan 4 Feb 9 Feb 10 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

40km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 50 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.7 mm on 18 Feb.

This area had burned before

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

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.7% of the area of London (91 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

Uhunmwonde where it started

9,134 ha reached on 22 Jan

4.4 %
Esan West

12 ha reached on 25 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 2015

Built-up area4.4 ha

Residents≈ 100

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.4 hectares of built-up land and about 100 residents (GHSL 2015, 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)
22 Jan	33.4 °C	29 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
23 Jan	35.8 °C	23 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
24 Jan	34.7 °C	14 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Jan	36.0 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
26 Jan	33.6 °C	17 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Jan	34.8 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
28 Jan	34.0 °C	17 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Jan	35.6 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
30 Jan	36.0 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
31 Jan	35.6 °C	17 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Feb	35.9 °C	22 %	19 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Feb	36.1 °C	20 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
3 Feb	37.1 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
4 Feb	36.8 °C	31 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
5 Feb	37.2 °C	20 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
6 Feb	37.4 °C	22 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
7 Feb	38.2 °C	19 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
8 Feb	36.3 °C	31 %	25 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
9 Feb	36.3 °C	21 %	24 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
10 Feb after	37.3 °C	12 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
11 Feb after	37.5 °C	11 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
12 Feb after	36.1 °C	27 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
13 Feb after	37.3 °C	25 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
14 Feb after	35.4 °C	36 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
15 Feb after	34.9 °C	41 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Feb after	35.8 °C	42 %	29 km/h	0.6 mm	High 29
17 Feb after	37.4 °C	34 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
18 Feb after	36.4 °C	50 %	37 km/h	1.7 mm	Moderate 20

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Jan 2016

After · 16 Feb 2016

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 · 413Every 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 Uhunmwonde fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 January 2016 to 9 February 2016 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 24 January 2016 to 2 February 2016.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,086 hectares (90.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Uhunmwonde (9,134 ha, 4.4 %); Esan West (12 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 38.2 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, 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 · 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: 2 February 2016 → 9 February 2016.
27 October 2026 Start date: 24 January 2016 → 22 January 2016.

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 24 January 2016 to 2 February 2016. 413 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 2015, 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