Raga fire, 14 October 2026 Raga
The fire started on 14 October 2026 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 11 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,547 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 365th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 152 in South Sudan in 2026, of 192.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Raga · 2020Aweil West · 2025Raga · 2024Raga · 2019
- Burnt area
- 5,547ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 11days
- 14 Oct 2026 – 24 Oct 2026
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 14 Oct
- 2026
- Heat detections
- 53
- in a single hotspot: 171 MW
- Danger at start
- 23
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 169MW
- 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 2 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,681 ha in 2016, 1,718 ha in 2017, 2,034 ha in 2019, 4,715 ha in 2020, 1,348 ha in 2021, 141 ha in 2022, 2,423 ha in 2024, 2,917 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 5,465 ha that had burned before.
- 4,715 ha Raga fire, November 2020 51,319 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,917 ha Aweil West fire, November 2025 188,386 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2,352 ha Raga fire, December 2024 12,167 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 767 ha Raga fire, November 2019 37,242 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 571 ha Raga fire, October 2016 59,950 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 253 ha Raga fire, November 2021 42,060 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 141 ha Raga fire, November 2022 16,893 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 started5,590 ha reached on 14 Oct0.1 %
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 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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives
| Day | High | Min. humidity | Peak gust | Rain | Danger (FWI) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Oct | 36.4 °C | 30 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 23 |
| 15 Oct | 39.0 °C | 24 % | 32 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 30 |
| 16 Oct | 38.9 °C | 25 % | 28 km/h | 0.2 mm | High 35 |
| 17 Oct | 35.4 °C | 28 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 33 |
| 18 Oct | 37.6 °C | 23 % | 26 km/h | 1.3 mm | High 29 |
| 19 Oct | 39.2 °C | 14 % | 38 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 43 |
| 20 Oct | 40.4 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 46 |
| 21 Oct | 40.3 °C | 16 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 22 Oct | 40.4 °C | 13 % | 37 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 23 Oct | 39.0 °C | 14 % | 23 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 42 |
| 24 Oct | 38.6 °C | 13 % | 27 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 47 |
| 25 Oct after | 39.1 °C | 13 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 44 |
| 26 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 23 % | 24 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 44 |
| 27 Oct after | 38.1 °C | 24 % | 38 km/h | 0.1 mm | Very high 47 |
| 28 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 20 % | 33 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 49 |
| 29 Oct after | 39.0 °C | 10 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 52 |
| 30 Oct after | 39.3 °C | 12 % | 36 km/h | 0.0 mm | Extreme 54 |
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 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 54 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 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 · 53Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 51,319 haRaga14 November 2020 · 25 days · 6 km away
- 59,950 haRaga27 October 2016 · 18 days · 8 km away
- 42,060 haRaga10 November 2021 · 25 days · 15 km away
- 37,242 haRaga26 November 2019 · 18 days · 15 km away
- 36,294 haRaga15 November 2025 · 29 days · 27 km away
- 188,386 haAweil West2 November 2025 · 38 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 14 October 2026 to 24 October 2026 (11 days). The perimeter dates it from 19 October 2026 to 24 October 2026.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,547 hectares (55.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Raga (5,590 ha, 0.1 %).
- Is the Raga fire still active?
- No fire detections since 24 Oct 2026, 11:40 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 38 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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 19 October 2026 to 24 October 2026. 53 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.
- 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.