How long did the Raga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,417 hectares (264.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Raga (26,657 ha, 0.4 %).

Is the Raga fire still active?

Yes: satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 23:50 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 41 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2026-10-14 → 2026-11-02

Raga fire, 14 October 2026 Raga

Burning · last detection 2 Nov 2026, 23:50 UTC

The fire started on 14 October 2026 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,417 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 44th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 441 with a page). Number 10 in South Sudan in 2026, of 207.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2019 Raga · 2017 Raga · 2019 Raga · 2025

Is it still active?

Satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 23:50 UTC. Everything suggests it is still burning. Satellites pass a few times a day and cloud or smoke can hide the fire: a lack of detections is not an official extinction. Each country’s emergency service declares a fire contained or out.

Burnt area: 26,417ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 14 Oct 2026 – 2 Nov 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 14 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 264; in a single hotspot: 337 MW
Danger at start: 39; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 241MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Oct2 Nov

Play back 2 Nov 2026

How it evolved, day by day

14 Oct 18 Oct 21 Oct 24 Oct 25 Oct 28 Oct 31 Oct

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

41°high

41km/h · peak gust

10%lowest humidity

It had gone 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

84% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 3,769 ha in 2016, 7,798 ha in 2017, 14,363 ha in 2019, 8,712 ha in 2020, 6,531 ha in 2021, 4,545 ha in 2022, 590 ha in 2023, 2,215 ha in 2024, 6,113 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 22,233 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (264 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

Raga where it started

26,657 ha reached on 14 Oct

0.4 %

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.

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
14 Oct	39.0 °C	20 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
15 Oct	39.8 °C	20 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
16 Oct	40.6 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
17 Oct	37.9 °C	24 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Oct	36.3 °C	24 %	27 km/h	1.3 mm	High 30
19 Oct	38.9 °C	11 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
20 Oct	40.4 °C	15 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
21 Oct	40.6 °C	15 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
22 Oct	40.2 °C	13 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
23 Oct	38.7 °C	13 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
24 Oct	38.6 °C	16 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
25 Oct	38.3 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Oct	38.2 °C	21 %	26 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 45
27 Oct	38.3 °C	25 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Oct	37.7 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
29 Oct	39.3 °C	10 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
30 Oct	38.8 °C	13 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
31 Oct	39.1 °C	14 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
1 Nov	39.3 °C	13 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
2 Nov	39.2 °C	16 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
3 Nov after	40.1 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 7 Oct 2026

After · 2 Nov 2026

Before After

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 23 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 144 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 66: 4.4 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak144 µg/m³

Days over the guideline15 days

PM10168 µg/m³

Optical depth0.64

WHO 15

121314151617181920212223242526272829

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 · 264Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

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 14 October 2026 to 2 November 2026 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 October 2026 to 2 November 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,417 hectares (264.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Raga (26,657 ha, 0.4 %).
Is the Raga fire still active?: Yes: satellites detected fire on 2 Nov 2026, 23:50 UTC. Check the emergency service for the official status.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 41 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 6 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 27 October 2026.

2 November 2026 Area: 25,358 → 25,927 ha.
1 November 2026 Area: 23,873 → 25,358 ha.
31 October 2026 Area: 23,291 → 23,873 ha.
30 October 2026 Area: 7,897 → 23,291 ha.
30 October 2026 Start date: 20 October 2026 → 14 October 2026.
27 October 2026 Page published (7,897 ha).

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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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

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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 18 October 2026 to 2 November 2026. 264 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.
Weather: ECMWF IFS model, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives.

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.