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Raga fire, 13 December 2023 Raga

Out · last detection 4 Jan 2024, 11:07 UTC

The fire started on 13 December 2023 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,949 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 325th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 432 with a page). Number 77 in South Sudan in 2023, of 106.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2024Raga · 2021Raga · 2025Yalinga · 2025

Burnt area
5,949ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
13 Dec 2023 – 5 Jan 2024
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
13 Dec
2023
Heat detections
227
in a single hotspot: 81 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
82MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Dec5 Jan
4 Jan 2024

How it evolved, day by day

21 Dec 2023 · 192 MW · 15 22 Dec 2023 · 254 MW · 37 23 Dec 2023 · 217 MW · 23 24 Dec 2023 · 26 MW · 23 25 Dec 2023 · 127 MW · 19 26 Dec 2023 · 70 MW · 15 27 Dec 2023 · 96 MW · 18 28 Dec 2023 · 27 MW · 10 29 Dec 2023 · 50 MW · 25 30 Dec 2023 · 7 MW · 5 31 Dec 2023 · 1 MW · 1 1 Jan 2024 · 47 MW · 6 2 Jan 2024 · 97 MW · 24 3 Jan 2024 · 14 MW · 2 4 Jan 2024 · 11 MW · 4
21 Dec 22 Dec 24 Dec 27 Dec 30 Dec 2 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
46km/h · peak gust
6%lowest humidity

It had gone 28 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

28% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,204 ha in 2016, 117 ha in 2017, 124 ha in 2019, 651 ha in 2020, 8 ha in 2021, 668 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 1,691 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (59 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
    5,988 ha reached on 21 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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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 31.2 °C 14 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
14 Dec 30.4 °C 16 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Dec 31.2 °C 14 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
16 Dec 33.0 °C 13 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Dec 33.7 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
18 Dec 33.9 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 34.4 °C 15 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
20 Dec 34.5 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
21 Dec 35.4 °C 15 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
22 Dec 35.7 °C 13 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
23 Dec 34.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
24 Dec 34.0 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
25 Dec 33.4 °C 12 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
26 Dec 32.8 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
27 Dec 33.0 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
28 Dec 32.5 °C 16 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
29 Dec 32.3 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
30 Dec 32.4 °C 15 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
31 Dec 32.0 °C 16 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
1 Jan 32.6 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
2 Jan 33.4 °C 15 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
3 Jan 32.8 °C 14 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Jan 33.1 °C 6 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
5 Jan 32.5 °C 8 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Jan after 32.4 °C 10 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Jan after 32.5 °C 11 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
8 Jan after 32.8 °C 11 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
9 Jan after 34.1 °C 13 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jan after 34.4 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
11 Jan after 33.8 °C 14 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
12 Jan after 33.6 °C 12 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
13 Jan after 34.4 °C 9 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
14 Jan after 34.2 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
15 Jan after 31.9 °C 9 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 6 Dec 2023
After · 12 Jan 2024

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 21 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 33 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak33 µg/m³
Days over the guideline16 days
PM1077 µg/m³
Optical depth0.40
1718192021222324252627282930311
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 227Every 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 2023 to 5 January 2024 (24 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 December 2023 to 29 December 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,949 hectares (59.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Raga (5,988 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.7 °C, humidity dropped to 6 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 56, 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 2023 → 5 January 2024.
  2. Start date: 19 December 2023 → 13 December 2023.

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 19 December 2023 to 29 December 2023. 227 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 2025, 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.