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Yambio fire, 12 December 2017 Yambio

Out · last detection 21 Dec 2017, 11:50 UTC

The fire started on 12 December 2017 in Yambio, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,318 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 117th largest in Western Equatoria since 2016 (of 361 with a page). Number 47 in South Sudan in 2017, of 203.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Ibba · 2016Ibba · 2019Ibba · 2024Yambio · 2018

Burnt area
11,318ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
12 Dec 2017 – 20 Dec 2017
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
12 Dec
2017
Heat detections
339
in a single hotspot: 201 MW
Danger at start
28
High · FWI index
Average daily power
592MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Dec20 Dec
21 Dec 2017

How it evolved, day by day

12 Dec 2017 · 892 MW · 33 13 Dec 2017 · 448 MW · 28 14 Dec 2017 · 857 MW · 38 15 Dec 2017 · 10 MW · 4 16 Dec 2017 · 175 MW · 17 17 Dec 2017 · 273 MW · 42 18 Dec 2017 · 2,263 MW · 123 19 Dec 2017 · 404 MW · 20 21 Dec 2017 · 6 MW · 2
12 Dec 14 Dec 16 Dec 18 Dec 21 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

36°high
35km/h · peak gust
18%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 8,338 ha in 2016. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,168 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (113 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. Yambio where it started
    11,397 ha reached on 12 Dec
    1.3 %

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)
12 Dec 34.8 °C 25 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
13 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
14 Dec 36.3 °C 18 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Dec 35.1 °C 20 % 16 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
16 Dec 35.0 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
17 Dec 35.3 °C 20 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
18 Dec 35.8 °C 22 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
19 Dec 35.4 °C 23 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
20 Dec 35.9 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
21 Dec after 37.2 °C 14 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Dec after 36.9 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Dec after 36.6 °C 17 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
24 Dec after 35.8 °C 18 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
25 Dec after 35.4 °C 21 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
26 Dec after 35.1 °C 19 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
27 Dec after 34.8 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
28 Dec after 36.1 °C 18 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
29 Dec after 36.8 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
30 Dec after 35.3 °C 19 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Dec 2017
After · 27 Dec 2017

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 · 339Every 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 Yambio fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 December 2017 and 20 December 2017: 9 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,318 hectares (113.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Yambio (11,397 ha, 1.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.3 °C, humidity dropped to 18 % and gusts hit 35 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 36, class 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.

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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How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 339 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.