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Raga fire, 15 December 2016 Raga

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2017, 00:02 UTC

The fire started on 15 December 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 52,041 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 22th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 11 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2025Raga · 2019Djema · 2018

Burnt area
52,041ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
15 Dec 2016 – 15 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
15 Dec
2016
Heat detections
2,740
in a single hotspot: 151 MW
Danger at start
40
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
610MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Dec15 Jan
16 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

15 Dec 2016 · 687 MW · 77 16 Dec 2016 · 554 MW · 61 17 Dec 2016 · 1,252 MW · 114 18 Dec 2016 · 2,833 MW · 169 19 Dec 2016 · 3,001 MW · 373 20 Dec 2016 · 1,465 MW · 244 21 Dec 2016 · 363 MW · 87 22 Dec 2016 · 927 MW · 97 23 Dec 2016 · 1,077 MW · 117 24 Dec 2016 · 665 MW · 104 25 Dec 2016 · 813 MW · 165 26 Dec 2016 · 1,996 MW · 186 27 Dec 2016 · 260 MW · 49 28 Dec 2016 · 190 MW · 31 29 Dec 2016 · 247 MW · 35 30 Dec 2016 · 203 MW · 43 31 Dec 2016 · 350 MW · 125 1 Jan 2017 · 60 MW · 35 2 Jan 2017 · 169 MW · 51 3 Jan 2017 · 279 MW · 38 4 Jan 2017 · 184 MW · 40 5 Jan 2017 · 748 MW · 68 6 Jan 2017 · 87 MW · 23 7 Jan 2017 · 70 MW · 23 8 Jan 2017 · 216 MW · 26 9 Jan 2017 · 283 MW · 20 10 Jan 2017 · 116 MW · 33 11 Jan 2017 · 436 MW · 53 12 Jan 2017 · 48 MW · 17 13 Jan 2017 · 38 MW · 6 14 Jan 2017 · 490 MW · 26 15 Jan 2017 · 10 MW · 5 16 Jan 2017 · 0 MW · 1
15 Dec 19 Dec 20 Dec 25 Dec 30 Dec 4 Jan 9 Jan 14 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

38°high
45km/h · peak gust
8%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 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 33% of the area of London (520 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
    52,032 ha reached on 8 Dec
    0.8 %

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)
15 Dec 33.0 °C 12 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Dec 33.6 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Dec 33.8 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Dec 33.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Dec 33.8 °C 16 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
20 Dec 34.4 °C 15 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
21 Dec 35.3 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
22 Dec 35.3 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 36.5 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
26 Dec 34.2 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Dec 33.7 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Dec 33.9 °C 19 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Dec 35.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Dec 35.7 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
31 Dec 35.8 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
1 Jan 36.5 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan 35.5 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan 34.5 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Jan 35.3 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Jan 34.8 °C 14 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 36.8 °C 11 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
7 Jan 37.0 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Jan 36.7 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan 35.5 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Jan 36.4 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan 37.2 °C 10 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan 37.0 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
13 Jan 37.0 °C 9 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
14 Jan 37.6 °C 8 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Jan 38.5 °C 8 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
16 Jan after 38.6 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
17 Jan after 38.4 °C 9 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
18 Jan after 38.9 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
19 Jan after 38.6 °C 9 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Jan after 38.6 °C 10 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
21 Jan after 38.6 °C 10 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 65
22 Jan after 38.5 °C 11 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
23 Jan after 38.9 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
24 Jan after 37.2 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 60
25 Jan after 38.0 °C 12 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Dec 2016
After · 22 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 · 2,740Every 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 15 December 2016 and 15 January 2017: 32 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 52,041 hectares (520.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (52,032 ha, 0.8 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.5 °C, humidity dropped to 8 % and gusts hit 45 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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. 2,740 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.