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Raga fire, 5 December 2018 Wau, Raga

Out · last detection 30 Dec 2018, 11:37 UTC

The fire started on 5 December 2018 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 26 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,527 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 45th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 10 in South Sudan in 2018, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wau · 2016Tambura · 2016Raga · 2016Raga · 2017

Burnt area
25,527ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
26days
5 Dec 2018 – 30 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
2
counties
Started on
5 Dec
2018
Heat detections
1,258
in a single hotspot: 152 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
546MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 5 Dec30 Dec
30 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

5 Dec 2018 · 270 MW · 7 6 Dec 2018 · 117 MW · 23 7 Dec 2018 · 11 MW · 8 8 Dec 2018 · 188 MW · 9 10 Dec 2018 · 475 MW · 71 11 Dec 2018 · 750 MW · 138 12 Dec 2018 · 4,533 MW · 234 13 Dec 2018 · 535 MW · 86 14 Dec 2018 · 738 MW · 96 15 Dec 2018 · 2,718 MW · 174 16 Dec 2018 · 679 MW · 37 17 Dec 2018 · 148 MW · 33 18 Dec 2018 · 465 MW · 34 19 Dec 2018 · 111 MW · 17 20 Dec 2018 · 191 MW · 54 21 Dec 2018 · 289 MW · 44 22 Dec 2018 · 182 MW · 23 23 Dec 2018 · 67 MW · 18 24 Dec 2018 · 259 MW · 35 25 Dec 2018 · 154 MW · 12 26 Dec 2018 · 65 MW · 17 27 Dec 2018 · 143 MW · 24 28 Dec 2018 · 487 MW · 52 29 Dec 2018 · 44 MW · 6 30 Dec 2018 · 21 MW · 6
5 Dec 10 Dec 12 Dec 14 Dec 18 Dec 22 Dec 26 Dec 30 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
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 30 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 16,234 ha in 2016, 7,589 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 17,034 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (255 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. Wau
    21,699 ha reached on 8 Dec
    1.1 %
  2. Raga where it started
    3,957 ha reached on 5 Dec
    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 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)
5 Dec 34.6 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
6 Dec 34.9 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Dec 34.9 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Dec 35.2 °C 13 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
9 Dec 32.2 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 34.2 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
11 Dec 33.9 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
12 Dec 34.3 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
13 Dec 34.4 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
14 Dec 34.2 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
15 Dec 35.5 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
16 Dec 36.2 °C 18 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
17 Dec 36.5 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Dec 34.7 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
19 Dec 34.7 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
20 Dec 34.0 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
21 Dec 34.0 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
22 Dec 33.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
23 Dec 33.5 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
24 Dec 34.1 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
25 Dec 35.1 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
26 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Dec 36.6 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
28 Dec 36.7 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Dec 35.6 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec 35.1 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
31 Dec after 34.5 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan after 35.9 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan after 36.5 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
3 Jan after 36.5 °C 17 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
4 Jan after 36.2 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
5 Jan after 36.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan after 36.0 °C 19 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Jan after 35.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
8 Jan after 35.1 °C 11 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jan after 34.9 °C 14 % 37 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 · 28 Nov 2018
After · 6 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 · 1,258Every 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 5 December 2018 to 30 December 2018 (26 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 December 2018 to 29 December 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 25,527 hectares (255.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Wau (21,699 ha, 1.1 %); Raga (3,957 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 29 December 2018 → 30 December 2018.
  2. Start date: 12 December 2018 → 5 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 12 December 2018 to 29 December 2018. 1,258 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.