How long did the Baliet fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 December 2023 to 9 January 2024 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2023 to 8 January 2024.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,880 hectares (88.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Baliet (8,931 ha, 0.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

SS · South Sudan · 2023-12-22 → 2024-01-09

Baliet fire, 22 December 2023 Baliet

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2024, 11:13 UTC

The fire started on 22 December 2023 in Baliet, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 19 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 8,880 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 101th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 40 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Baliet · 2016 Baliet · 2019 Baliet · 2022 Baliet · 2024

Burnt area: 8,880ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 19days; 22 Dec 2023 – 9 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 22 Dec; 2023
Heat detections: 423; in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start: 66; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 261MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 22 Dec9 Jan

Play back 9 Jan 2024

How it evolved, day by day

22 Dec 25 Dec 28 Dec 29 Dec 31 Dec 3 Jan 6 Jan 9 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

40°high

46km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 40 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,333 ha in 2016, 18 ha in 2017, 200 ha in 2018, 4,397 ha in 2019, 68 ha in 2020, 1,262 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 8,047 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 5.6% of the area of London (89 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

Baliet where it started

8,931 ha reached on 22 Dec

0.8 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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 Dec	40.0 °C	11 %	44 km/h	Extreme 66
23 Dec	38.6 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 67
24 Dec	37.6 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 66
25 Dec	38.1 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 66
26 Dec	37.5 °C	17 %	44 km/h	Extreme 63
27 Dec	37.5 °C	18 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
28 Dec	36.7 °C	16 %	43 km/h	Extreme 61
29 Dec	37.0 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 59
30 Dec	37.0 °C	13 %	41 km/h	Extreme 60
31 Dec	37.0 °C	11 %	43 km/h	Extreme 62
1 Jan	37.2 °C	13 %	36 km/h	Extreme 57
2 Jan	37.8 °C	13 %	46 km/h	Extreme 65
3 Jan	37.3 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
4 Jan	37.5 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 62
5 Jan	36.1 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 66
6 Jan	36.7 °C	11 %	43 km/h	Extreme 64
7 Jan	36.8 °C	11 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
8 Jan	37.6 °C	10 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
9 Jan	38.6 °C	11 %	39 km/h	Extreme 62
10 Jan after	38.9 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 64
11 Jan after	38.8 °C	13 %	46 km/h	Extreme 68
12 Jan after	37.5 °C	14 %	45 km/h	Extreme 68
13 Jan after	37.7 °C	13 %	40 km/h	Extreme 63
14 Jan after	38.3 °C	13 %	43 km/h	Extreme 67
15 Jan after	37.3 °C	11 %	49 km/h	Very extreme 72
16 Jan after	36.8 °C	12 %	44 km/h	Extreme 69
17 Jan after	36.6 °C	17 %	43 km/h	Extreme 63
18 Jan after	36.0 °C	12 %	44 km/h	Extreme 64
19 Jan after	36.7 °C	8 %	42 km/h	Extreme 65

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 15 Dec 2023

After · 16 Jan 2024

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 7 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 72 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 36: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak72 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10103 µg/m³

Optical depth1.24

WHO 15

2627282930311234567891011

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 · 423Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Baliet fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 22 December 2023 to 9 January 2024 (19 days). The perimeter dates it from 28 December 2023 to 8 January 2024.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 8,880 hectares (88.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Baliet (8,931 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 67, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Sudan (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.

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.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 8 January 2024 → 9 January 2024.
26 October 2026 Start date: 28 December 2023 → 22 December 2023.

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?

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We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 28 December 2023 to 8 January 2024. 423 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 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). 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