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Luakpiny/Nasir fire, February 2021 Maiwut, Luakpiny/Nasir

Out · last detection 16 Feb 2021, 11:31 UTC

The fire started on 2 February 2021 in Luakpiny/Nasir, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,474 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 24th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 11 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maiwut · 2024Maiwut · 2026Wantawo · 2026Luakpiny/Nasir · 2017

Burnt area
25,474ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
14days
2 Feb 2021 – 15 Feb 2021
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
2 Feb
2021
Heat detections
1,144
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
50
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
756MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Feb15 Feb
16 Feb 2021

How it evolved, day by day

2 Feb 2021 · 149 MW · 16 3 Feb 2021 · 116 MW · 21 4 Feb 2021 · 841 MW · 108 5 Feb 2021 · 1,887 MW · 212 6 Feb 2021 · 2,086 MW · 162 7 Feb 2021 · 625 MW · 94 8 Feb 2021 · 376 MW · 57 9 Feb 2021 · 524 MW · 60 10 Feb 2021 · 756 MW · 74 11 Feb 2021 · 1,501 MW · 102 12 Feb 2021 · 763 MW · 54 13 Feb 2021 · 350 MW · 25 14 Feb 2021 · 684 MW · 76 15 Feb 2021 · 490 MW · 51 16 Feb 2021 · 198 MW · 32
2 Feb 5 Feb 6 Feb 8 Feb 11 Feb 14 Feb

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high
53km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (255 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. Maiwut
    17,678 ha
    4.8 %
  2. Luakpiny/Nasir where it started
    7,882 ha
    1.5 %

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 2020
Built-up area0.13 ha
Residents≈ 400

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.13 hectares of built-up land and about 400 residents (GHSL 2020, 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.

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)
2 Feb 39.3 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Feb 39.7 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
4 Feb 39.9 °C 13 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
5 Feb 38.8 °C 10 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72
6 Feb 37.4 °C 8 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
7 Feb 37.1 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
8 Feb 37.8 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
9 Feb 38.6 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
10 Feb 40.3 °C 12 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
11 Feb 40.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
12 Feb 40.4 °C 10 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
13 Feb 40.9 °C 8 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Feb 41.0 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
15 Feb 41.1 °C 10 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Feb after 41.0 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
17 Feb after 39.7 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 77
18 Feb after 37.2 °C 12 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
19 Feb after 36.8 °C 11 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 73
20 Feb after 37.4 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
21 Feb after 38.2 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
22 Feb after 39.5 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
23 Feb after 39.3 °C 10 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
24 Feb after 39.9 °C 10 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
25 Feb after 39.4 °C 11 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 72

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 26 Jan 2021
After · 22 Feb 2021

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 · 0Every 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 South Sudan ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Luakpiny/Nasir fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 February 2021 and 15 February 2021: 14 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 25,474 hectares (254.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Maiwut (17,678 ha, 4.8 %); Luakpiny/Nasir (7,882 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 41.1 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 72, 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 · 5 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 22 February 2021 → 15 February 2021.
  2. Start date: 26 January 2021 → 2 February 2021.
  3. Name: Maiwut → Luakpiny/Nasir.
  4. Last day with fire: 15 February 2021 → 22 February 2021.
  5. Start date: 2 February 2021 → 26 January 2021.

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.

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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2020, 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.