Skip to content
worldfires
en
SS · South Sudan · →

Pochalla fire, 6 February 2021 Pochalla

Out · last detection 16 Feb 2021, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 6 February 2021 in Pochalla, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,178 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 142th largest in Jonglei since 2016 (of 428 with a page). Number 73 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Pochalla · 2026Pochalla · 2024

Burnt area
9,178ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
6 Feb 2021 – 15 Feb 2021
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
6 Feb
2021
Heat detections
334
in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start
61
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
326MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Feb15 Feb
16 Feb 2021

How it evolved, day by day

6 Feb 2021 · 52 MW · 6 7 Feb 2021 · 106 MW · 9 8 Feb 2021 · 188 MW · 24 9 Feb 2021 · 559 MW · 35 10 Feb 2021 · 401 MW · 65 11 Feb 2021 · 157 MW · 20 12 Feb 2021 · 234 MW · 35 13 Feb 2021 · 325 MW · 26 14 Feb 2021 · 1,398 MW · 98 15 Feb 2021 · 156 MW · 14 16 Feb 2021 · 9 MW · 2
6 Feb 8 Feb 10 Feb 12 Feb 14 Feb 16 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
37km/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 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Pochalla where it started
    9,233 ha
    1.1 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
6 Feb 38.4 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
7 Feb 37.3 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
8 Feb 38.2 °C 8 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Feb 38.5 °C 14 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
10 Feb 39.5 °C 19 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Feb 39.9 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Feb 40.8 °C 11 % 18 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Feb 40.8 °C 11 % 19 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Feb 40.5 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
15 Feb 40.7 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
16 Feb after 40.4 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
17 Feb after 38.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
18 Feb after 37.5 °C 13 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
19 Feb after 36.6 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
20 Feb after 36.8 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
21 Feb after 38.1 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Feb after 38.8 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
23 Feb after 38.4 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
24 Feb after 39.4 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
25 Feb after 39.0 °C 11 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 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 Pochalla fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 February 2021 and 15 February 2021: 10 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 9,178 hectares (91.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Pochalla (9,233 ha, 1.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.8 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 61, 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

History of this page · 4 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 20 February 2021 → 15 February 2021.
  2. Start date: 31 January 2021 → 6 February 2021.
  3. Last day with fire: 15 February 2021 → 20 February 2021.
  4. Start date: 6 February 2021 → 31 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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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. 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.