Raga fire, 11 January 2024 Raga
The fire started on 11 January 2024 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 14 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,318 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 99th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 432 with a page). Number 34 in South Sudan in 2024, of 180.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2017Raga · 2022Djema · 2020Raga · 2018
- Burnt area
- 13,318ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 14days
- 11 Jan 2024 – 24 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 11 Jan
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 656
- in a single hotspot: 117 MW
- Danger at start
- 54
- Extreme · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 426MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 58 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
100% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 7,399 ha in 2016, 6,184 ha in 2017, 3,055 ha in 2018, 7,668 ha in 2019, 6,403 ha in 2020, 7,493 ha in 2021, 6,359 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 13,259 ha that had burned before.
- 5,129 ha Raga fire, November 2017 19,066 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,548 ha Raga fire, December 2022 8,774 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,543 ha Djema fire, December 2020 72,733 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 3,055 ha Raga fire, December 2018 18,640 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,056 ha Raga fire, December 2019 6,343 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,797 ha Raga fire, December 2019 5,401 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,408 ha Raga fire, December 2016 10,495 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Raga where it started13,055 ha reached on 11 Jan0.2 %
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 2025Inside 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 11 Jan | 34.5 °C | 13 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 12 Jan | 34.0 °C | 12 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 13 Jan | 34.9 °C | 9 % | 29 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 53 |
| 14 Jan | 34.7 °C | 8 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 15 Jan | 32.3 °C | 8 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 16 Jan | 32.5 °C | 10 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 17 Jan | 32.1 °C | 7 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 18 Jan | 32.4 °C | 7 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 19 Jan | 32.8 °C | 8 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 20 Jan | 31.8 °C | 9 % | 39 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 21 Jan | 32.6 °C | 7 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 22 Jan | 34.8 °C | 7 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 23 Jan | 34.8 °C | 8 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
| 24 Jan | 35.3 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 57 |
| 25 Jan after | 34.5 °C | 12 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 26 Jan after | 31.3 °C | 11 % | 43 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 27 Jan after | 31.4 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 59 |
| 28 Jan after | 32.0 °C | 9 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 29 Jan after | 33.2 °C | 9 % | 35 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 55 |
| 30 Jan after | 33.8 °C | 11 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 56 |
| 31 Jan after | 33.2 °C | 10 % | 40 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 1 Feb after | 31.8 °C | 11 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 60 |
| 2 Feb after | 31.4 °C | 11 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 58 |
| 3 Feb after | 32.9 °C | 8 % | 35 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.
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 · CopernicusOn 22 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 33: 2.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 656Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 19,066 haRaga27 November 2017 · 17 days · 5 km away
- 25,772 haRaga24 December 2024 · 30 days · 8 km away
- 72,733 haDjema10 December 2020 · 30 days · 10 km away
- 156,058 haDjema22 December 2025 · 48 days · 22 km away
- 28,865 haRaga25 December 2024 · 18 days · 35 km away
- 27,092 haRaga7 December 2016 · 24 days · 36 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Raga fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 January 2024 to 24 January 2024 (14 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 January 2024 to 22 January 2024.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,318 hectares (133.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (13,055 ha, 0.2 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 35.3 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 40 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 22 January 2024 → 24 January 2024.
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.
Report an error
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 11 January 2024 to 22 January 2024. 656 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.
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.