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Raga fire, 3 December 2016 Raga

Out · last detection 15 Dec 2016, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 3 December 2016 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 17,598 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 72th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 31 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

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

Burnt area
17,598ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
13days
3 Dec 2016 – 15 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
3 Dec
2016
Heat detections
555
in a single hotspot: 137 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
367MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 3 Dec15 Dec
15 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

3 Dec 2016 · 105 MW · 23 4 Dec 2016 · 61 MW · 15 5 Dec 2016 · 81 MW · 12 6 Dec 2016 · 184 MW · 32 7 Dec 2016 · 1,572 MW · 107 8 Dec 2016 · 901 MW · 82 9 Dec 2016 · 493 MW · 82 10 Dec 2016 · 261 MW · 66 11 Dec 2016 · 524 MW · 55 12 Dec 2016 · 137 MW · 23 13 Dec 2016 · 59 MW · 14 14 Dec 2016 · 322 MW · 19 15 Dec 2016 · 68 MW · 19
3 Dec 5 Dec 7 Dec 9 Dec 11 Dec 13 Dec 15 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
38km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 14 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 11% of the area of London (176 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
    17,705 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.3 %

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)
3 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Dec 36.0 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
5 Dec 36.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Dec 37.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Dec 36.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
8 Dec 36.3 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
9 Dec 35.6 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
10 Dec 35.9 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
11 Dec 35.2 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Dec 35.6 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Dec 36.2 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
14 Dec 34.5 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
15 Dec 33.9 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
16 Dec after 33.8 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
17 Dec after 33.7 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
18 Dec after 33.8 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
19 Dec after 34.6 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
20 Dec after 35.2 °C 13 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
21 Dec after 35.6 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
22 Dec after 36.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
23 Dec after 37.3 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Dec after 37.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
25 Dec after 34.9 °C 14 % 38 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 · 26 Nov 2016
After · 22 Dec 2016

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 · 555Every 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 3 December 2016 and 15 December 2016: 13 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 17,598 hectares (176.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (17,705 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.4 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 38 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 55, 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. 555 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.