Buram fire, December 2018 Buram
The fire started on 12 December 2018 in Buram, Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,279 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 239th largest in South Darfur since 2016 (of 322 with a page). Number 28 in Sudan in 2018, of 38.
- Burnt area
- 2,279ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 5days
- 12 Dec 2018 – 16 Dec 2018
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- localities
- Started on
- 12 Dec
- 2018
- Heat detections
- 73
- in a single hotspot: 146 MW
- Energy released
- 909MW
- sum of detected power
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.
This area had burned before
60% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,369 ha in 2016.
What happened to each town
-
Buram where it started2,293 ha reached on 10 Dec0.6 %
Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.
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.
Detections table · 73Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,198 haBuram23 November 2025 · 17 days · 5 km away
- 5,951 haBuram17 November 2023 · 7 days · 6 km away
- 3,272 haBuram28 December 2024 · 12 days · 22 km away
- 4,080 haBuramDecember 2022 · 10 days · 23 km away
- 7,015 haBuram9 December 2025 · 8 days · 25 km away
- 3,225 haAl Radoum11 December 2025 · 3 days · 34 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Buram fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 December 2018 and 16 December 2018: 5 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,279 hectares (22.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Buram (2,293 ha, 0.6 %).
- Where does this data come from?
- From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of 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
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
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.