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Raga fire, 13 December 2019 Raga

Out · last detection 7 Jan 2020, 11:43 UTC

The fire started on 13 December 2019 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 25 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 10,277 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 145th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 434 with a page). Number 56 in South Sudan in 2019, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Wau · 2016Raga · 2025Wau · 2020Raga · 2025

Burnt area
10,277ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
25days
13 Dec 2019 – 6 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
13 Dec
2019
Heat detections
290
in a single hotspot: 74 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
121MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Dec6 Jan
7 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

13 Dec 2019 · 69 MW · 6 14 Dec 2019 · 90 MW · 4 17 Dec 2019 · 5 MW · 1 18 Dec 2019 · 21 MW · 2 19 Dec 2019 · 4 MW · 1 20 Dec 2019 · 38 MW · 6 21 Dec 2019 · 150 MW · 27 22 Dec 2019 · 298 MW · 35 23 Dec 2019 · 120 MW · 27 24 Dec 2019 · 403 MW · 66 25 Dec 2019 · 321 MW · 19 26 Dec 2019 · 797 MW · 57 27 Dec 2019 · 52 MW · 6 28 Dec 2019 · 14 MW · 5 29 Dec 2019 · 8 MW · 4 30 Dec 2019 · 105 MW · 13 1 Jan 2020 · 1 MW · 1 3 Jan 2020 · 4 MW · 2 4 Jan 2020 · 8 MW · 3 6 Jan 2020 · 13 MW · 4 7 Jan 2020 · 8 MW · 1
13 Dec 18 Dec 21 Dec 24 Dec 26 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 4 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

37°high
37km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 33 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

68% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 5,967 ha in 2016, 3,021 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,015 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6.5% of the area of London (103 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
    10,317 ha reached on 13 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)
13 Dec 34.5 °C 28 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
14 Dec 35.2 °C 27 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Dec 34.2 °C 30 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Dec 34.2 °C 14 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Dec 33.5 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
18 Dec 33.4 °C 15 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
19 Dec 33.9 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Dec 34.2 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Dec 35.1 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec 35.2 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 36.0 °C 16 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Dec 35.8 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
25 Dec 36.0 °C 17 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Dec 34.3 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Dec 33.5 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 32.6 °C 10 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec 34.1 °C 9 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Dec 35.3 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
31 Dec 35.3 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 35.9 °C 16 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jan 37.1 °C 16 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
3 Jan 35.7 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
4 Jan 33.3 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan 32.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
6 Jan 33.4 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
7 Jan after 34.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
8 Jan after 34.9 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
9 Jan after 33.4 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
10 Jan after 33.4 °C 12 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jan after 32.1 °C 9 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
12 Jan after 31.0 °C 9 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
13 Jan after 32.7 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jan after 35.2 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan after 37.1 °C 11 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Jan after 37.9 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Dec 2019
After · 13 Jan 2020

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 · 290Every 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 13 December 2019 to 6 January 2020 (25 days). The perimeter dates it from 20 December 2019 to 30 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 10,277 hectares (102.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (10,317 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 37 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, 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: 30 December 2019 → 6 January 2020.
  2. Start date: 20 December 2019 → 13 December 2019.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 20 December 2019 to 30 December 2019. 290 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.