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Raga fire, 12 December 2018 Raga

Out · last detection 18 Dec 2018, 12:03 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2018 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,513 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 424 with a page). Number 17 in South Sudan in 2018, of 120.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2016Raga · 2025Raga · 2016Wau · 2025

Burnt area
14,513ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
6days
12 Dec 2018 – 17 Dec 2018
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
12 Dec
2018
Heat detections
652
in a single hotspot: 138 MW
Danger at start
42
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
607MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec17 Dec
18 Dec 2018

How it evolved, day by day

12 Dec 2018 · 409 MW · 49 13 Dec 2018 · 229 MW · 53 14 Dec 2018 · 473 MW · 96 15 Dec 2018 · 2,705 MW · 167 16 Dec 2018 · 400 MW · 42 17 Dec 2018 · 24 MW · 4 18 Dec 2018 · 12 MW · 1
12 Dec 13 Dec 14 Dec 15 Dec 16 Dec 17 Dec 18 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

36°high
36km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 37 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

77% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 11,030 ha in 2016, 3,946 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 11,223 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.2% of the area of London (145 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
    14,559 ha reached on 10 Dec
    0.2 %

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)
12 Dec 33.7 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
13 Dec 33.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
14 Dec 33.5 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
15 Dec 34.8 °C 16 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
16 Dec 35.7 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
17 Dec 35.9 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Dec after 34.0 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Dec after 33.9 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec after 33.2 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
21 Dec after 33.3 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
22 Dec after 32.7 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec after 32.7 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec after 33.4 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Dec after 34.6 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Dec after 35.2 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
27 Dec after 35.7 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Dec 2018
After · 24 Dec 2018

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 · 652Every 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 12 December 2018 and 17 December 2018: 6 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 14,513 hectares (145.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (14,559 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.9 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 36 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 44, class Very high.
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.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 652 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.