How long did the Yirol West fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 January 2021 to 6 February 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2021 to 6 February 2021.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,457 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Yirol West (7,505 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 2021-01-23 → 2021-02-06

Yirol West fire, January 2021 Yirol West

Out · last detection 6 Feb 2021, 11:18 UTC

The fire started on 23 January 2021 in Yirol West, South Sudan, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 7,457 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 78th largest in Lakes since 2016 (of 158 with a page). Number 98 in South Sudan in 2021, of 212.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Yirol West · 2017 Yirol West · 2020 Terekeka · 2021 Awerial · 2021

Burnt area: 7,457ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 15days; 23 Jan 2021 – 6 Feb 2021
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 23 Jan; 2021
Heat detections: 255; in a single hotspot: 49 MW
Danger at start: 46; Very high · FWI index
Average daily power: 88MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 23 Jan6 Feb

Play back 6 Feb 2021

How it evolved, day by day

23 Jan 25 Jan 28 Jan 30 Jan 1 Feb 3 Feb 5 Feb

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

43km/h · peak gust

11%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

29% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 982 ha in 2016, 10 ha in 2017, 1,581 ha in 2020. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,181 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.7% of the area of London (75 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

Yirol West where it started

7,505 ha reached on 23 Jan

1.5 %

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 2020

Built-up area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
23 Jan	35.8 °C	23 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Jan	35.6 °C	27 %	35 km/h	0.3 mm	Very high 44
25 Jan	36.2 °C	25 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
26 Jan	36.5 °C	24 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
27 Jan	37.6 °C	18 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
28 Jan	36.7 °C	22 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
29 Jan	38.2 °C	12 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
30 Jan	36.2 °C	11 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
31 Jan	37.7 °C	15 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
1 Feb	38.0 °C	16 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
2 Feb	38.7 °C	15 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
3 Feb	39.2 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
4 Feb	40.6 °C	12 %	29 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
5 Feb	37.4 °C	13 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
6 Feb	35.2 °C	11 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 60
7 Feb after	34.7 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
8 Feb after	35.6 °C	12 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
9 Feb after	37.0 °C	13 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 55
10 Feb after	39.0 °C	14 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
11 Feb after	38.8 °C	15 %	31 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 54
12 Feb after	40.6 °C	10 %	23 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
13 Feb after	39.4 °C	11 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 56
14 Feb after	40.0 °C	12 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
15 Feb after	40.2 °C	15 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
16 Feb after	39.3 °C	15 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 16 Jan 2021

After · 13 Feb 2021

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.

Detections table · 255Every 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 Yirol West fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 23 January 2021 to 6 February 2021 (15 days). The perimeter dates it from 27 January 2021 to 6 February 2021.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 7,457 hectares (74.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Yirol West (7,505 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.6 °C, humidity dropped to 11 % and gusts hit 43 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 60, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 27 January 2021 → 23 January 2021.

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.
Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 27 January 2021 to 6 February 2021. 255 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 2020, 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