Wase fire, December 2024 Wase, Karim Lamido
The fire started on 25 December 2024 in Wase, Nigeria, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,611 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 3th largest in Plateau since 2016 (of 35 with a page). Number 3 in Nigeria in 2024, of 121.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 11,611ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 26days
- 25 Dec 2024 – 19 Jan 2025
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- local government areas
- Started on
- 25 Dec
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 446
- in a single hotspot: 105 MW
- Danger at start
- 55
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 179MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
51% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 99 ha in 2016, 2,985 ha in 2022, 2,974 ha in 2023, 1 ha in 2024.
- 2,933 ha Karim Lamido fire, December 2022 6,134 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,250 ha Wase fire, February 2023 3,021 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 93 ha Karim Lamido fire, January 2016 3,467 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1 ha Karim Lamido fire, December 2024 3,155 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Wase where it started9,588 ha reached on 26 Dec2.0 %
-
2,097 ha reached on 25 Dec0.3 %
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) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Jan | 37.9 °C | 13 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 2 Jan | 38.4 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 3 Jan | 38.3 °C | 14 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 4 Jan | 38.7 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 5 Jan | 36.7 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 6 Jan | 35.4 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 7 Jan | 35.9 °C | 17 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 8 Jan | 35.5 °C | 16 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 9 Jan | 33.7 °C | 19 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 10 Jan | 34.2 °C | 18 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 11 Jan | 33.7 °C | 15 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Jan | 32.7 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 13 Jan | 35.4 °C | 20 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 14 Jan | 36.1 °C | 17 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 15 Jan | 36.9 °C | 17 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 48 |
| 16 Jan | 37.4 °C | 14 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 17 Jan | 39.3 °C | 14 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 18 Jan | 39.1 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 19 Jan | 37.5 °C | 33 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 38 |
| 20 Jan after | 37.4 °C | 31 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 40 |
| 21 Jan after | 38.4 °C | 20 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 22 Jan after | 38.3 °C | 15 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 23 Jan after | 37.7 °C | 14 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Jan after | 38.1 °C | 13 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 8 January 2025 the air beside the fire reached 123 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 103: 6.9 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 446Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,105 haWase4 January 2026 · 7 days · 4 km away
- 6,134 haKarim Lamido20 December 2022 · 15 days · 5 km away
- 7,466 haKarim Lamido7 December 2025 · 8 days · 11 km away
- 6,676 haKarim Lamido19 December 2025 · 24 days · 16 km away
- 34,595 haWase26 November 2025 · 33 days · 21 km away
- 31,006 haWase5 November 2025 · 31 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Wase fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 25 December 2024 to 19 January 2025 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 1 January 2025 to 14 January 2025.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,611 hectares (116.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wase (9,588 ha, 2.0 %); Karim Lamido (2,097 ha, 0.3 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 58, 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
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 1 January 2025 to 14 January 2025. 446 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.
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.