How long did the Raga fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 13 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 October 2026 to 25 October 2026.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,053 hectares (60.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Raga (6,105 ha, 0.1 %).

Is the Raga fire still active?

No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 11:25 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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.

SS · South Sudan · 2026-10-13 → 2026-10-27

Raga fire, 13 October 2026 Raga

Out · last detection 27 Oct 2026, 11:25 UTC

The fire started on 13 October 2026 in Raga, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,053 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 317th largest in Western Bahr el Ghazal since 2016 (of 431 with a page). Number 132 in South Sudan in 2026, of 192.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Raga · 2025 Raga · 2025 Raga · 2021

Burnt area: 6,053ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 13 Oct 2026 – 27 Oct 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 13 Oct; 2026
Heat detections: 126; in a single hotspot: 86 MW
Danger at start: 28; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 145MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 13 Oct27 Oct

Play back 27 Oct 2026

How it evolved, day by day

13 Oct 15 Oct 17 Oct 19 Oct 21 Oct 22 Oct 24 Oct 26 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

39°high

42km/h · peak gust

12%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

53% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,802 ha in 2016, 1,742 ha in 2019, 1,060 ha in 2020, 631 ha in 2024, 1,064 ha in 2025. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,202 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 3.8% of the area of London (61 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

6,105 ha reached on 13 Oct

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) · forecast models, provisional until the ERA5 reanalysis arrives

Day	High	Min. humidity	Peak gust	Rain	Danger (FWI)
13 Oct	36.7 °C	28 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
14 Oct	37.3 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 33
15 Oct	37.9 °C	21 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
16 Oct	38.8 °C	14 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
17 Oct	36.6 °C	21 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
18 Oct	38.0 °C	25 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	High 38
19 Oct	38.6 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
20 Oct	39.1 °C	14 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
21 Oct	39.3 °C	13 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Oct	39.2 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
23 Oct	37.7 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
24 Oct	37.6 °C	13 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
25 Oct	38.8 °C	12 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
26 Oct	38.5 °C	16 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
27 Oct	38.3 °C	21 %	34 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 48
28 Oct after	35.7 °C	22 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
29 Oct after	38.0 °C	12 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
30 Oct after	37.8 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 6 Oct 2026

After · 29 Oct 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 22 October 2026 the air beside the fire reached 69 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 52: 3.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak69 µg/m³

Days over the guideline10 days

PM10168 µg/m³

Optical depth0.64

WHO 15

111213141516171819202122

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 · 126Every 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 13 October 2026 to 27 October 2026 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 15 October 2026 to 25 October 2026.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,053 hectares (60.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Raga (6,105 ha, 0.1 %).
Is the Raga fire still active?: No fire detections since 27 Oct 2026, 11:25 UTC. A lack of detections is not an official extinction.
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 39.3 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

30 October 2026 Last day with fire: 24 October 2026 → 27 October 2026.
26 October 2026 Area: 5,682 → 6,053 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.

Report an error

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 15 October 2026 to 25 October 2026. 126 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.

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.

Where it burned