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NG · Nigeria · –

Wasagu-Danko fire, October 2026 Wasagu-Danko, Maru, Bukkuyum

Burning · last detection 7 Nov 2026, 13:01 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2026 in Wasagu-Danko, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,600 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

Number 52 in Nigeria in 2026, of 328.

GWIS near-real-time perimeter, from the layer that changed in August 2025: this fire is not compared with fires from earlier years, because since then the GWIS layer gives more and larger perimeters.

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 7 Nov 2026, 13:01 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area
6,600ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
18days
21 Oct 2026 – 7 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
21 Oct
2026
Heat detections
138
in a single hotspot: 61 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
149MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct7 Nov
7 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

24 Oct 2026 · 63 MW · 6 26 Oct 2026 · 0 MW · 0 28 Oct 2026 · 41 MW · 6 29 Oct 2026 · 535 MW · 38 30 Oct 2026 · 189 MW · 15 31 Oct 2026 · 89 MW · 12 1 Nov 2026 · 20 MW · 3 2 Nov 2026 · 170 MW · 15 3 Nov 2026 · 192 MW · 18 4 Nov 2026 · 0 MW · 0 5 Nov 2026 · 98 MW · 7 6 Nov 2026 · 208 MW · 17 7 Nov 2026 · 31 MW · 5
24 Oct 29 Oct 1 Nov 4 Nov 7 Nov

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
35km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

21% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 25 ha in 2022, 1,113 ha in 2023, 1,216 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,412 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 4.2% of the area of London (66 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. Wasagu-Danko where it started
    6,312 ha reached on 24 Oct
    1.6 %
  2. 323 ha reached on 26 Oct
    0.0 %
  3. 14 ha
    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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
21 Oct 34.3 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
22 Oct 33.7 °C 29 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
23 Oct 34.2 °C 26 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
24 Oct 34.2 °C 25 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
25 Oct 34.2 °C 20 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
26 Oct 34.5 °C 22 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
27 Oct 34.9 °C 27 % 13 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
28 Oct 35.1 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Oct 35.0 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
30 Oct 35.5 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
31 Oct 34.7 °C 27 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
1 Nov 36.0 °C 25 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Nov 35.1 °C 34 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
3 Nov 37.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
4 Nov 35.2 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
5 Nov 36.7 °C 17 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Nov 35.7 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Nov 35.8 °C 18 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2026
After · 6 Nov 2026

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 27 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 78 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 54: 3.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak78 µg/m³
Days over the guideline4 days
PM10239 µg/m³
Optical depth0.44
26272829
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 · 138Every 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 Wasagu-Danko fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 October 2026 to 7 November 2026 (18 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 October 2026 to 6 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,600 hectares (66.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Wasagu-Danko (6,312 ha, 1.6 %); Maru (323 ha, 0.0 %); Bukkuyum (14 ha, 0.0 %).
Is the Wasagu-Danko fire still active?
Yes: satellites detected fire on 7 Nov 2026, 13:01 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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 · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 30 October 2026.
  1. Area: 3,855 → 6,539 ha.
  2. Start date: 28 October 2026 → 21 October 2026.
  3. The page “Wasagu-Danko, 24 October 2026” has been merged into this one: it was the same fire.
  4. Area: 3,263 → 3,855 ha.
  5. Area: 2,465 → 3,263 ha.
  6. Page published (2,465 ha).

RSS Changes to this page With cross-checks and a citable version

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 28 October 2026 to 6 November 2026. 138 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.