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Raga fire, 9 December 2019 Raga

Out · last detection 10 Jan 2020, 23:23 UTC

The fire started on 9 December 2019 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 32 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 18,363 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 70th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 25 in South Sudan in 2019, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2018Raga · 2016Raga · 2016Raga · 2025

Burnt area
18,363ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
32days
9 Dec 2019 – 9 Jan 2020
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
9 Dec
2019
Heat detections
961
in a single hotspot: 175 MW
Danger at start
44
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
241MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Dec9 Jan
10 Jan 2020

How it evolved, day by day

9 Dec 2019 · 7 MW · 2 10 Dec 2019 · 19 MW · 3 11 Dec 2019 · 12 MW · 1 15 Dec 2019 · 69 MW · 8 16 Dec 2019 · 217 MW · 44 17 Dec 2019 · 542 MW · 81 18 Dec 2019 · 220 MW · 61 19 Dec 2019 · 179 MW · 70 20 Dec 2019 · 842 MW · 38 21 Dec 2019 · 790 MW · 70 22 Dec 2019 · 1,456 MW · 100 23 Dec 2019 · 1,125 MW · 112 24 Dec 2019 · 310 MW · 65 25 Dec 2019 · 55 MW · 9 26 Dec 2019 · 195 MW · 25 27 Dec 2019 · 209 MW · 22 28 Dec 2019 · 168 MW · 33 29 Dec 2019 · 104 MW · 36 30 Dec 2019 · 78 MW · 19 31 Dec 2019 · 28 MW · 8 1 Jan 2020 · 28 MW · 5 2 Jan 2020 · 44 MW · 16 3 Jan 2020 · 225 MW · 44 4 Jan 2020 · 59 MW · 14 5 Jan 2020 · 81 MW · 16 6 Jan 2020 · 42 MW · 8 7 Jan 2020 · 49 MW · 16 8 Jan 2020 · 34 MW · 6 9 Jan 2020 · 56 MW · 28 10 Jan 2020 · 1 MW · 1
9 Dec 17 Dec 22 Dec 27 Dec 1 Jan 6 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
9%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

57% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,506 ha in 2016, 3,478 ha in 2017, 3,102 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 10,424 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (184 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
    18,449 ha reached on 9 Dec
    0.3 %

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 32.5 °C 18 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Dec 34.0 °C 18 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Dec 33.6 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
12 Dec 34.6 °C 27 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
13 Dec 32.6 °C 35 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Dec 34.6 °C 22 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
15 Dec 34.1 °C 25 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
16 Dec 33.4 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
17 Dec 32.9 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 32.6 °C 15 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
19 Dec 32.9 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
20 Dec 33.4 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 34.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
22 Dec 34.3 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
23 Dec 35.1 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
24 Dec 35.4 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
25 Dec 34.9 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
26 Dec 33.0 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
27 Dec 32.5 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 31.8 °C 9 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
29 Dec 33.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
30 Dec 34.6 °C 11 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Dec 34.5 °C 11 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
1 Jan 35.0 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
2 Jan 36.2 °C 14 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
3 Jan 34.9 °C 17 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
4 Jan 32.0 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
5 Jan 31.2 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
6 Jan 32.5 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
7 Jan 33.1 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
8 Jan 34.0 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan 32.4 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
10 Jan after 32.8 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Jan after 31.4 °C 8 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
12 Jan after 30.2 °C 9 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
13 Jan after 31.9 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
14 Jan after 34.1 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Jan after 36.6 °C 11 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
16 Jan after 37.2 °C 10 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
17 Jan after 36.7 °C 12 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
18 Jan after 33.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
19 Jan after 32.0 °C 15 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Dec 2019
After · 16 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 · 961Every 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 9 January 2020 (32 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 December 2019 to 2 January 2020.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 18,363 hectares (183.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (18,449 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.2 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 40 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: 2 January 2020 → 9 January 2020.
  2. Start date: 15 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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 December 2019 to 2 January 2020. 961 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.