How long did the Malakal fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 December 2025 to 22 December 2025 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 December 2025 to 21 December 2025.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,892 hectares (58.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: Malakal (3,696 ha, 4.9 %); Fashoda (2,232 ha, 0.6 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 2025-12-14 → 2025-12-22

Malakal fire, 14 December 2025 Malakal, Fashoda

Out · last detection 22 Dec 2025, 11:49 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2025 in Malakal, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,892 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 201th largest in Upper Nile since 2016 (of 285 with a page). Number 221 in South Sudan in 2025, of 292.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Malakal · 2019 Fashoda · 2021 Panyikang · 2017 Panyikang · 2017

Burnt area: 5,892ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 9days; 14 Dec 2025 – 22 Dec 2025
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 14 Dec; 2025
Heat detections: 115; in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 147MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec22 Dec

Play back 22 Dec 2025

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 15 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 22 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

35°high

44km/h · peak gust

13%lowest humidity

It had gone 51 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

92% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,852 ha in 2016, 1,576 ha in 2017, 944 ha in 2018, 2,629 ha in 2019, 658 ha in 2020, 1,764 ha in 2021, 2,474 ha in 2023, 556 ha in 2024. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,449 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.7% of the area of London (59 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

Malakal where it started

3,696 ha reached on 14 Dec

4.9 %
Fashoda

2,232 ha reached on 15 Dec

0.6 %

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)
14 Dec	34.9 °C	21 %	38 km/h	Extreme 51
15 Dec	33.6 °C	17 %	44 km/h	Extreme 56
16 Dec	32.4 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 55
17 Dec	33.2 °C	15 %	40 km/h	Extreme 54
18 Dec	32.4 °C	13 %	42 km/h	Extreme 57
19 Dec	34.6 °C	17 %	39 km/h	Extreme 54
20 Dec	34.0 °C	16 %	36 km/h	Extreme 53
21 Dec	34.3 °C	15 %	35 km/h	Extreme 52
22 Dec	34.6 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
23 Dec after	34.7 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 49
24 Dec after	36.3 °C	18 %	34 km/h	Extreme 51
25 Dec after	37.2 °C	16 %	30 km/h	Very high 49
26 Dec after	36.6 °C	18 %	33 km/h	Extreme 52
27 Dec after	36.1 °C	19 %	38 km/h	Extreme 55
28 Dec after	35.3 °C	14 %	41 km/h	Extreme 58
29 Dec after	35.2 °C	10 %	38 km/h	Extreme 57
30 Dec after	33.9 °C	11 %	44 km/h	Extreme 62
31 Dec after	33.3 °C	12 %	39 km/h	Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Dec 2025

After · 29 Dec 2025

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 18 December 2025 the air beside the fire reached 73 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 37: 2.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak73 µg/m³

Days over the guideline13 days

PM1091 µg/m³

Optical depth0.43

WHO 15

12131415161718192021222324

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 · 115Every 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 Malakal fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 December 2025 to 22 December 2025 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 14 December 2025 to 21 December 2025.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,892 hectares (58.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: Malakal (3,696 ha, 4.9 %); Fashoda (2,232 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 34.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 57, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Last day with fire: 21 December 2025 → 22 December 2025.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 14 December 2025 to 21 December 2025. 115 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