Kilak fire, 3 January 2017 Kilak
The fire started on 3 January 2017 in Kilak, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 16 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,340 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 210th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 33 in Uganda in 2017, of 221.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Kilak · 2016Kilak · 2016Kilak · 2016Nwoya · 2016
- Burnt area
- 2,340ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 16days
- 3 Jan 2017 – 18 Jan 2017
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 3 Jan
- 2017
- Heat detections
- 90
- in a single hotspot: 44 MW
- Average daily power
- 57MW
- 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
62% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,475 ha in 2016.
- 722 ha Kilak fire, January 2016 1,121 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 588 ha Kilak fire, January 2016 1,799 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 166 ha Kilak fire, January 2016 5,830 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
-
Kilak where it started2,356 ha reached on 3 Jan0.5 %
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 2015Inside the perimeter there were about 14 hectares of built-up land and about 2,100 residents (GHSL 2015, 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
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.
Detections table · 90Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,830 haKilak26 January 2016 · 25 days · 5 km away
- 4,431 haNwoya22 January 2016 · 24 days · 25 km away
- 4,248 haEast Moyo5 January 2019 · 19 days · 25 km away
- 11,762 haEast Moyo26 December 2016 · 31 days · 32 km away
- 7,451 haAswa8 December 2016 · 29 days · 36 km away
- 4,676 haNwoya28 December 2016 · 22 days · 40 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Kilak fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 3 January 2017 to 18 January 2017 (16 days). The perimeter dates it from 5 January 2017 to 11 January 2017.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,340 hectares (23.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Kilak (2,356 ha, 0.5 %).
- 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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 5 January 2017 to 11 January 2017. 90 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2015, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.