How long did the Dodoth fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 January 2026 and 16 January 2026: 3 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 1,308 hectares (13.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Dodoth (1,317 ha, 0.2 %).

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 · 2026-01-14 → 2026-01-16

Dodoth fire, 14 January 2026 Dodoth

Out · last detection 16 Jan 2026, 10:39 UTC

The fire started on 14 January 2026 in Dodoth, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 1,308 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 763th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 146 in Uganda in 2026, of 270.

The power measured by the satellite is low (15.7 MW in the strongest hotspot), more typical of grass or stubble burning, or a slow surface fire, than of a large crown fire.

Burnt area: 1,308ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 3days; 14 Jan 2026 – 16 Jan 2026
Municipalities hit: 1; counties
Started on: 14 Jan; 2026
Heat detections: 16; in a single hotspot: 16 MW
Energy released: 113MW; sum of detected power

Play back 16 Jan 2026

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Jan16 Jan

How it evolved, day by day

141516

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: 446 ha in 2020, 73 ha in 2021.

What happened to each town

Dodoth where it started

1,317 ha reached on 14 Jan

0.2 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance is from the town centre 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 · 7 Jan 2026

After · 23 Jan 2026

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 17 January 2026 the air beside the fire reached 18 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak18 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1019 µg/m³

Optical depth0.24

WHO 15

1213141516171819

Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

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 · 16Every 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 Dodoth fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 January 2026 and 16 January 2026: 3 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 1,308 hectares (13.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Dodoth (1,317 ha, 0.2 %).
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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