How long did the Kilak fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2017 and 19 January 2017: 18 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 11,762 hectares (117.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 2 municipalities: East Moyo (11,041 ha, 3.5 %); Kilak (798 ha, 0.2 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.

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 · 2017-01-02 → 2017-01-19

Kilak fire, 2 January 2017 East Moyo, Kilak

Out · last detection 20 Jan 2017, 11:30 UTC

The fire started on 2 January 2017 in Kilak, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 18 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,762 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 7th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 2 in Uganda in 2017, of 244.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Moyo · 2019 East Moyo · 2017 Kilak · 2016 East Moyo · 2016

Burnt area: 11,762ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 18days; 2 Jan 2017 – 19 Jan 2017
Municipalities hit: 2; counties
Started on: 2 Jan; 2017
Heat detections: 465; in a single hotspot: 0 MW
Danger at start: 38; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 166MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 2 Jan19 Jan

Play back 20 Jan 2017

How it evolved, day by day

2 Jan 5 Jan 6 Jan 8 Jan 11 Jan 14 Jan 17 Jan 20 Jan

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

48km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 29 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.4% of the area of London (118 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

East Moyo

11,041 ha

3.5 %
Kilak where it started

798 ha

0.2 %

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.

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	Danger (FWI)
2 Jan	33.9 °C	17 %	32 km/h	High 38
3 Jan	33.3 °C	21 %	25 km/h	Very high 38
4 Jan	34.1 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Very high 38
5 Jan	34.8 °C	10 %	40 km/h	Very high 49
6 Jan	34.9 °C	7 %	48 km/h	Extreme 56
7 Jan	35.2 °C	9 %	36 km/h	Very high 49
8 Jan	34.4 °C	14 %	30 km/h	Very high 48
9 Jan	33.6 °C	13 %	33 km/h	Very high 48
10 Jan	34.0 °C	15 %	23 km/h	Very high 44
11 Jan	34.5 °C	11 %	37 km/h	Extreme 50
12 Jan	34.3 °C	13 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
13 Jan	34.7 °C	11 %	40 km/h	Extreme 53
14 Jan	35.1 °C	11 %	22 km/h	Very high 46
15 Jan	35.5 °C	11 %	27 km/h	Very high 48
16 Jan	36.3 °C	8 %	37 km/h	Extreme 57
17 Jan	36.5 °C	8 %	41 km/h	Extreme 61
18 Jan	35.7 °C	11 %	45 km/h	Extreme 62
19 Jan	35.3 °C	14 %	39 km/h	Extreme 56
20 Jan after	35.4 °C	17 %	33 km/h	Very high 49
21 Jan after	35.1 °C	15 %	32 km/h	Very high 50
22 Jan after	36.1 °C	15 %	43 km/h	Extreme 57
23 Jan after	36.5 °C	11 %	36 km/h	Extreme 52
24 Jan after	35.9 °C	12 %	30 km/h	Extreme 52
25 Jan after	35.7 °C	12 %	35 km/h	Extreme 53
26 Jan after	35.5 °C	14 %	34 km/h	Extreme 53
27 Jan after	35.4 °C	18 %	34 km/h	Very high 49
28 Jan after	33.8 °C	22 %	31 km/h	Very high 42
29 Jan after	31.2 °C	27 %	28 km/h	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 26 Dec 2016

After · 26 Jan 2017

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 · 0Every 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 Kilak fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 2 January 2017 and 19 January 2017: 18 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 11,762 hectares (117.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 2 municipalities: East Moyo (11,041 ha, 3.5 %); Kilak (798 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 36.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 62, class Extreme.
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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Name: East Moyo → Kilak.

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; 3 polygons grouped in this page.
Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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.

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