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Raga fire, 16 December 2018 Raga

Out · last detection 9 Jan 2019, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 16 December 2018 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 29,613 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 38th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 8 in South Sudan in 2018, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2017Raga · 2016Djema · 2016

Burnt area
29,613ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
16 Dec 2018 – 9 Jan 2019
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
16 Dec
2018
Heat detections
1,220
in a single hotspot: 184 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
391MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Dec9 Jan
9 Jan 2019

How it evolved, day by day

16 Dec 2018 · 1 MW · 1 17 Dec 2018 · 4 MW · 2 18 Dec 2018 · 1,172 MW · 81 19 Dec 2018 · 387 MW · 70 20 Dec 2018 · 2,503 MW · 302 21 Dec 2018 · 1,043 MW · 276 22 Dec 2018 · 345 MW · 107 23 Dec 2018 · 241 MW · 54 24 Dec 2018 · 188 MW · 30 25 Dec 2018 · 102 MW · 38 26 Dec 2018 · 49 MW · 20 27 Dec 2018 · 1 MW · 1 28 Dec 2018 · 18 MW · 7 29 Dec 2018 · 53 MW · 15 30 Dec 2018 · 55 MW · 12 31 Dec 2018 · 12 MW · 11 1 Jan 2019 · 16 MW · 7 2 Jan 2019 · 11 MW · 7 3 Jan 2019 · 73 MW · 17 4 Jan 2019 · 6 MW · 3 5 Jan 2019 · 3,359 MW · 108 6 Jan 2019 · 71 MW · 39 7 Jan 2019 · 32 MW · 7 8 Jan 2019 · 16 MW · 4 9 Jan 2019 · 8 MW · 1
16 Dec 20 Dec 24 Dec 28 Dec 1 Jan 5 Jan 9 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

36°high
40km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 41 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

80% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 18,693 ha in 2016, 14,469 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 23,572 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 19% of the area of London (296 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
    29,603 ha reached on 16 Dec
    0.5 %

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)
16 Dec 35.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Dec 35.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
18 Dec 33.6 °C 12 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Dec 33.4 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
20 Dec 32.6 °C 17 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
21 Dec 32.9 °C 16 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Dec 32.2 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
23 Dec 32.4 °C 15 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
24 Dec 33.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
25 Dec 34.3 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Dec 35.0 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Dec 35.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec 35.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
29 Dec 34.5 °C 17 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
30 Dec 33.7 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
31 Dec 33.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 34.1 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
2 Jan 35.7 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Jan 35.1 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
4 Jan 35.2 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Jan 35.7 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Jan 35.9 °C 18 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Jan 34.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan 34.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
9 Jan 33.6 °C 14 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Jan after 35.1 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jan after 35.6 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan after 37.1 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Jan after 37.8 °C 13 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jan after 36.4 °C 15 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Jan after 34.8 °C 26 % 26 km/h 0.5 mm Very high 43
16 Jan after 36.3 °C 10 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
17 Jan after 34.8 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
18 Jan after 35.2 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
19 Jan after 36.2 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Dec 2018
After · 16 Jan 2019

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 · 1,220Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 December 2018 to 9 January 2019 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2018 to 7 January 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 29,613 hectares (296.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (29,603 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 40 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 7 January 2019 → 9 January 2019.
  2. Start date: 17 December 2018 → 16 December 2018.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 December 2018 to 7 January 2019. 1,220 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.