Chua fire, 15 January 2024 Chua
The fire started on 15 January 2024 in Chua, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 7 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,613 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 446th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 11 in Uganda in 2024, of 58.
The power measured by the satellite is low (20.3 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: Chua · 2020Chua · 2019Chua · 2022Chua · 2017
- Burnt area
- 1,613ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 7days
- 15 Jan 2024 – 21 Jan 2024
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 15 Jan
- 2024
- Heat detections
- 45
- in a single hotspot: 20 MW
- Average daily power
- 82MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
39% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2 ha in 2017, 218 ha in 2019, 383 ha in 2020, 23 ha in 2022.
- 383 ha Chua fire, January 2020 1,042 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 218 ha Chua fire, January 2019 2,653 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 23 ha Chua fire, January 2022 1,063 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 2 ha Chua fire, January 2017 1,079 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Chua where it started1,624 ha reached on 15 Jan0.4 %
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.
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 · CopernicusOn 18 January 2024 the air beside the fire reached 59 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 48: 3.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 45Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chua fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 15 January 2024 and 21 January 2024: 7 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 1,613 hectares (16.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Chua (1,624 ha, 0.4 %).
- 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
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.
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
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. 45 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
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.