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Raga fire, 6 December 2016 Raga, Aweil Centre

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2016, 11:44 UTC

The fire started on 6 December 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 23 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 62,637 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 17th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 8 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2019Aweil Centre · 2021Aweil Centre · 2024Raga · 2016

Burnt area
62,637ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
23days
6 Dec 2016 – 28 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
6 Dec
2016
Heat detections
3,431
in a single hotspot: 183 MW
Danger at start
43
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
783MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Dec28 Dec
29 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

6 Dec 2016 · 866 MW · 70 7 Dec 2016 · 648 MW · 124 8 Dec 2016 · 1,719 MW · 184 9 Dec 2016 · 1,148 MW · 214 10 Dec 2016 · 404 MW · 130 11 Dec 2016 · 634 MW · 123 12 Dec 2016 · 2,752 MW · 218 13 Dec 2016 · 1,253 MW · 246 14 Dec 2016 · 2,099 MW · 366 15 Dec 2016 · 2,290 MW · 342 16 Dec 2016 · 761 MW · 108 17 Dec 2016 · 1,273 MW · 173 18 Dec 2016 · 625 MW · 61 19 Dec 2016 · 433 MW · 84 20 Dec 2016 · 394 MW · 93 21 Dec 2016 · 155 MW · 38 22 Dec 2016 · 73 MW · 16 23 Dec 2016 · 508 MW · 88 24 Dec 2016 · 233 MW · 48 25 Dec 2016 · 66 MW · 37 26 Dec 2016 · 46 MW · 26 27 Dec 2016 · 203 MW · 45 28 Dec 2016 · 148 MW · 28 29 Dec 2016 · 62 MW · 12
6 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 14 Dec 18 Dec 22 Dec 26 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

37°high
43km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 17 days 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 40% of the area of London (626 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. Raga where it started
    62,017 ha reached on 29 Nov
    1.0 %
  2. Aweil Centre
    957 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.1 %

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 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)
6 Dec 37.4 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Dec 36.4 °C 15 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 36.6 °C 10 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
9 Dec 35.7 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
10 Dec 36.3 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
11 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
12 Dec 35.7 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Dec 36.2 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Dec 34.8 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Dec 33.9 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
16 Dec 34.2 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
17 Dec 34.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
18 Dec 34.1 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
19 Dec 34.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
20 Dec 35.3 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
21 Dec 36.1 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
22 Dec 36.1 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
23 Dec 37.4 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Dec 37.3 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
26 Dec 34.2 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
27 Dec 33.7 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
28 Dec 33.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Dec after 35.9 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Dec after 36.1 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Dec after 35.9 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
1 Jan after 36.8 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
2 Jan after 35.9 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Jan after 34.8 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan after 35.4 °C 12 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Jan after 35.1 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
6 Jan after 37.3 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan after 37.8 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 29 Nov 2016
After · 4 Jan 2017

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 · 3,431Every 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 Raga fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 6 December 2016 and 28 December 2016: 23 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 62,637 hectares (626.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Raga (62,017 ha, 1.0 %); Aweil Centre (957 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 43 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

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.

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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 3,431 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.