Skip to content
worldfires
en
SS · South Sudan · →

Terekeka fire, 14 December 2016 Terekeka

Out · last detection 23 Dec 2016, 11:56 UTC

The fire started on 14 December 2016 in Terekeka, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,161 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 25th largest in Central Equatoria since 2016 (of 84 with a page). Number 81 in South Sudan in 2016, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Terekeka · 2017Terekeka · 2020Terekeka · 2022Terekeka · 2021

Burnt area
9,161ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
14 Dec 2016 – 23 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
14 Dec
2016
Heat detections
299
in a single hotspot: 204 MW
Danger at start
45
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
419MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Dec23 Dec
23 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

14 Dec 2016 · 21 MW · 6 15 Dec 2016 · 36 MW · 7 16 Dec 2016 · 2 MW · 3 17 Dec 2016 · 14 MW · 5 18 Dec 2016 · 189 MW · 23 19 Dec 2016 · 2,228 MW · 57 20 Dec 2016 · 637 MW · 94 21 Dec 2016 · 208 MW · 66 22 Dec 2016 · 849 MW · 37 23 Dec 2016 · 6 MW · 1
14 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 19 Dec 20 Dec 22 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

38°high
49km/h · peak gust
17%lowest humidity

It had gone 20 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 5.8% of the area of London (92 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. Terekeka where it started
    9,224 ha reached on 14 Dec
    0.9 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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.

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)
14 Dec 36.9 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
15 Dec 34.2 °C 34 % 28 km/h 2.7 mm Moderate 12
16 Dec 35.0 °C 29 % 23 km/h 0.1 mm High 27
17 Dec 36.9 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Dec 36.7 °C 18 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
19 Dec 37.7 °C 21 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Dec 38.4 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
21 Dec 37.6 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
22 Dec 36.7 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
23 Dec 37.7 °C 22 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
24 Dec after 38.5 °C 19 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
25 Dec after 38.0 °C 22 % 42 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 50
26 Dec after 36.1 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Dec after 36.9 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
28 Dec after 36.7 °C 20 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
29 Dec after 38.0 °C 16 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
30 Dec after 38.0 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
31 Dec after 38.2 °C 16 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
1 Jan after 36.9 °C 21 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
2 Jan after 38.7 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 7 Dec 2016
After · 30 Dec 2016

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

Detections table · 299Every 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 Terekeka fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 14 December 2016 to 23 December 2016 (10 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 December 2016 to 22 December 2016.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,161 hectares (91.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Terekeka (9,224 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.4 °C, humidity dropped to 17 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 54, 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: 22 December 2016 → 23 December 2016.
  2. Start date: 17 December 2016 → 14 December 2016.

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?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy.

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 17 December 2016 to 22 December 2016. 299 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 2015, 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.