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Raga fire, 9 December 2019 Raga

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2019, 23:48 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2019 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 21 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,529 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 162th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 63 in South Sudan in 2019, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2025Raga · 2025Raga · 2016Raga · 2017

Burnt area
9,529ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
21days
9 Dec 2019 – 29 Dec 2019
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
9 Dec
2019
Heat detections
290
in a single hotspot: 50 MW
Danger at start
41
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
115MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec29 Dec
29 Dec 2019

How it evolved, day by day

9 Dec 2019 · 107 MW · 12 10 Dec 2019 · 35 MW · 2 13 Dec 2019 · 112 MW · 9 14 Dec 2019 · 70 MW · 12 15 Dec 2019 · 4 MW · 3 16 Dec 2019 · 45 MW · 10 17 Dec 2019 · 140 MW · 32 18 Dec 2019 · 241 MW · 85 19 Dec 2019 · 266 MW · 44 20 Dec 2019 · 331 MW · 23 21 Dec 2019 · 101 MW · 8 22 Dec 2019 · 74 MW · 15 23 Dec 2019 · 80 MW · 15 24 Dec 2019 · 74 MW · 16 29 Dec 2019 · 44 MW · 4
9 Dec 14 Dec 17 Dec 20 Dec 23 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

34°high
39km/h · peak gust
10%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 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: 4,858 ha in 2016, 3,334 ha in 2017, 2,718 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,602 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (95 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
    9,577 ha reached on 9 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)
9 Dec 31.7 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
10 Dec 33.3 °C 20 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
11 Dec 33.3 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
12 Dec 34.3 °C 26 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Dec 31.9 °C 37 % 20 km/h 1.1 mm Moderate 20
14 Dec 33.9 °C 19 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Dec 33.5 °C 25 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Dec 32.6 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Dec 32.0 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
18 Dec 31.8 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
19 Dec 31.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
20 Dec 32.8 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
21 Dec 33.4 °C 20 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
22 Dec 33.3 °C 20 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
23 Dec 34.2 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
24 Dec 34.4 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
25 Dec 33.9 °C 19 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
26 Dec 31.8 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
27 Dec 31.6 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Dec 31.0 °C 10 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
29 Dec 32.6 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
30 Dec after 33.8 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
31 Dec after 33.7 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
1 Jan after 34.4 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
2 Jan after 35.6 °C 14 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Jan after 34.2 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
4 Jan after 31.3 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
5 Jan after 30.6 °C 17 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jan after 31.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
7 Jan after 32.7 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
8 Jan after 33.2 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Dec 2019
After · 5 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 9 December 2019 to 29 December 2019 (21 days). The perimeter dates it from 13 December 2019 to 25 December 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,529 hectares (95.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (9,577 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.4 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 39 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 25 December 2019 → 29 December 2019.
  2. Start date: 13 December 2019 → 9 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 13 December 2019 to 25 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.