How long did the Buliisa fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2018 and 4 January 2018: 1 day 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 1,878 hectares (18.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Buliisa (1,891 ha, 0.8 %).

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

UG · Uganda · 2018-01-04 → 2018-01-04

Buliisa fire, 4 January 2018 Buliisa

Out · last detection 5 Jan 2018, 12:07 UTC

The fire started on 4 January 2018 in Buliisa, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 1 day. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,878 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 76th largest in Western Region since 2016 (of 255 with a page). Number 17 in Uganda in 2018, of 82.

The power measured by the satellite is low (21.8 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Buliisa · 2016 Buliisa · 2018 Buliisa · 2026 Buliisa · 2019

Burnt area: 1,878ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 1day; 4 Jan 2018 – 4 Jan 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 4 Jan; 2018
Heat detections: 37; in a single hotspot: 22 MW
Average daily power: 170MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Jan4 Jan

Play back 5 Jan 2018

How it evolved, day by day

4 Jan 5 Jan

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

This area had burned before

5% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 102 ha in 2016.

102 ha Buliisa fire, December 2016 9,055 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.2% of the area of London (19 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

Buliisa where it started

1,891 ha reached on 4 Jan

0.8 %

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.

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Dec 2017

After · 11 Jan 2018

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 · 37Every 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 Uganda ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Buliisa fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 January 2018 and 4 January 2018: 1 day 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 1,878 hectares (18.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Buliisa (1,891 ha, 0.8 %).
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Uganda (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.

Emergency number: 999 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 999 · 112.

How we know this

Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 37 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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 (Public Domain). 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