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Nzara fire, 18 December 2017 Nzara

Out · last detection 28 Dec 2017, 11:18 UTC

The fire started on 18 December 2017 in Nzara, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,228 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 251th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 130 in South Sudan in 2017, of 204.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Nzara · 2016Yambio · 2016Nzara · 2019Yambio · 2025

Burnt area
6,228ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
11days
18 Dec 2017 – 28 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
18 Dec
2017
Heat detections
191
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
196MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Dec28 Dec
28 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Dec 2017 · 240 MW · 21 19 Dec 2017 · 191 MW · 16 20 Dec 2017 · 27 MW · 13 21 Dec 2017 · 1,061 MW · 58 22 Dec 2017 · 54 MW · 14 23 Dec 2017 · 197 MW · 20 24 Dec 2017 · 130 MW · 39 25 Dec 2017 · 2 MW · 2 27 Dec 2017 · 54 MW · 3 28 Dec 2017 · 7 MW · 5
18 Dec 20 Dec 21 Dec 22 Dec 24 Dec 27 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

38°high
40km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 34 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

23% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,424 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.9% of the area of London (62 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. Nzara where it started
    6,275 ha reached on 18 Dec
    1.0 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
20 Dec 36.4 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Dec 37.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec 37.9 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Dec 38.1 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Dec 37.7 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
25 Dec 36.5 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
26 Dec 35.4 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Dec 35.6 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec 36.7 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Dec after 37.8 °C 14 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec after 37.2 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
31 Dec after 36.5 °C 13 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
1 Jan after 33.8 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan after 32.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan after 33.6 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Dec 2017
After · 4 Jan 2018

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 · 191Every 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 Nzara fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 18 December 2017 to 28 December 2017 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 December 2017 to 24 December 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,228 hectares (62.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Nzara (6,275 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.1 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 24 December 2017 → 28 December 2017.
  2. Start date: 20 December 2017 → 18 December 2017.

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 20 December 2017 to 24 December 2017. 191 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 2015, 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.