Lafon fire, February 2023 Lafon
The fire started on 11 February 2023 in Lafon, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,278 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 13th largest in Eastern Equatoria since 2016 (of 80 with a page). Number 11 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Lafon · 2021Lafon · 2019Lafon · 2021Lafon · 2017
- Burnt area
- 17,278ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 11 Feb 2023 – 17 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 11 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 863
- in a single hotspot: 143 MW
- Danger at start
- 69
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 570MW
- 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
82% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,002 ha in 2016, 1,744 ha in 2017, 6,330 ha in 2019, 1,024 ha in 2020, 11,221 ha in 2021, 1,372 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 14,239 ha that had burned before.
- 6,658 ha Lafon fire, February 2021 55,315 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 4,035 ha Lafon fire, January 2019 58,253 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 853 ha Lafon fire, December 2021 11,888 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 702 ha Lafon fire, January 2017 5,318 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 31 ha Lafon fire, February 2021 11,838 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
-
Lafon where it started17,400 ha reached on 10 Feb1.1 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 0.01 hectares of built-up land and about 200 residents (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 | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Feb | 39.8 °C | 16 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 69 |
| 12 Feb | 39.4 °C | 14 % | 51 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
| 13 Feb | 40.0 °C | 12 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 14 Feb | 39.6 °C | 12 % | 61 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 79 |
| 15 Feb | 38.4 °C | 15 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 16 Feb | 36.5 °C | 14 % | 31 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 17 Feb | 37.9 °C | 16 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 18 Feb after | 39.0 °C | 16 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 61 |
| 19 Feb after | 38.2 °C | 15 % | 41 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 62 |
| 20 Feb after | 39.8 °C | 13 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 21 Feb after | 39.7 °C | 13 % | 53 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 74 |
| 22 Feb after | 40.1 °C | 13 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 23 Feb after | 39.7 °C | 16 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 24 Feb after | 38.8 °C | 16 % | 50 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very extreme 71 |
| 25 Feb after | 38.3 °C | 23 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 64 |
| 26 Feb after | 39.7 °C | 21 % | 52 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 65 |
| 27 Feb after | 38.6 °C | 21 % | 56 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 67 |
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 13 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 110 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 51: 3.4 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 · 863Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 11,888 haLafon12 December 2021 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 11,838 haLafon6 February 2021 · 6 days · 15 km away
- 55,315 haLafon1 February 2021 · 12 days · 24 km away
- 17,526 haLafon20 January 2017 · 4 days · 28 km away
- 58,253 haLafon9 January 2019 · 7 days · 30 km away
- 17,639 haLafon11 December 2021 · 5 days · 31 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Lafon fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 11 February 2023 and 17 February 2023: 7 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 17,278 hectares (172.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Lafon (17,400 ha, 1.1 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.0 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 61 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 79, class Very 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
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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 863 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.
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.