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Raga fire, 8 December 2016 Raga, Wau

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2017, 23:12 UTC

The fire started on 8 December 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 30 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 163,967 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

This page is probably a fire complex, not a single fire. GWIS merges into one perimeter the fires that touch over weeks, which in large burning seasons can join dozens of separate fires. The total area is reliable; the origin and dates refer to the whole complex.

Other fire pages in the same area and on the same dates:

It is the 3th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 3 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2019Raga · 2025Raga · 2016Raga · 2020

Burnt area
163,967ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
30days
8 Dec 2016 – 6 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
8 Dec
2016
Heat detections
8,602
in a single hotspot: 223 MW
Danger at start
38
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
2.2GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 8 Dec6 Jan
7 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

8 Dec 2016 · 1,028 MW · 66 9 Dec 2016 · 614 MW · 113 10 Dec 2016 · 1,629 MW · 240 11 Dec 2016 · 1,188 MW · 165 12 Dec 2016 · 1,149 MW · 184 13 Dec 2016 · 1,893 MW · 268 14 Dec 2016 · 1,226 MW · 267 15 Dec 2016 · 5,114 MW · 683 16 Dec 2016 · 7,162 MW · 504 17 Dec 2016 · 6,317 MW · 748 18 Dec 2016 · 5,233 MW · 542 19 Dec 2016 · 7,599 MW · 897 20 Dec 2016 · 6,857 MW · 741 21 Dec 2016 · 1,847 MW · 326 22 Dec 2016 · 1,067 MW · 195 23 Dec 2016 · 2,494 MW · 267 24 Dec 2016 · 1,512 MW · 220 25 Dec 2016 · 3,840 MW · 508 26 Dec 2016 · 1,149 MW · 332 27 Dec 2016 · 783 MW · 121 28 Dec 2016 · 1,247 MW · 126 29 Dec 2016 · 1,383 MW · 146 30 Dec 2016 · 1,706 MW · 213 31 Dec 2016 · 1,405 MW · 242 1 Jan 2017 · 353 MW · 82 2 Jan 2017 · 402 MW · 76 3 Jan 2017 · 617 MW · 50 4 Jan 2017 · 229 MW · 39 5 Jan 2017 · 102 MW · 42 6 Jan 2017 · 14 MW · 9 7 Jan 2017 · 49 MW · 9
8 Dec 13 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 23 Dec 28 Dec 2 Jan 7 Jan

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
44km/h · peak gust
11%lowest humidity

It had gone 6 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?

20 km
It burned almost the same area as London (1,640 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
    152,937 ha reached on 7 Dec
    2.4 %
  2. Wau
    929 ha reached on 18 Dec
    0.0 %

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)
8 Dec 35.6 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
9 Dec 35.1 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
10 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
11 Dec 35.2 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
12 Dec 35.3 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
13 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
14 Dec 34.5 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Dec 33.3 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
16 Dec 33.9 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Dec 34.2 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 34.1 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Dec 34.1 °C 16 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
20 Dec 34.7 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Dec 35.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
23 Dec 36.8 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
24 Dec 36.6 °C 18 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 35.9 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Dec 34.5 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
27 Dec 34.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Dec 34.2 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec 35.6 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
30 Dec 36.0 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Dec 36.1 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Jan 36.7 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan 35.8 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan 34.8 °C 15 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Jan 35.6 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Jan 35.0 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 37.0 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan after 37.2 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Jan after 37.0 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan after 35.8 °C 9 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
10 Jan after 36.7 °C 9 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan after 37.5 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan after 37.2 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Jan after 37.3 °C 8 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jan after 37.8 °C 8 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Jan after 38.8 °C 8 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Jan after 38.8 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 1 Dec 2016
After · 13 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 · 8,602Every 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 8 December 2016 and 6 January 2017: 30 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 163,967 hectares (1,639.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Raga (152,937 ha, 2.4 %); Wau (929 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 52, 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.

Report an error
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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 6 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 8,602 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.