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Maruzi fire, 19 December 2016 Maruzi

Out · last detection 29 Dec 2016, 11:42 UTC

The fire started on 19 December 2016 in Maruzi, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,582 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 164th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 35 in Uganda in 2016, of 269.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Maruzi · 2016

Burnt area
2,582ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
19 Dec 2016 – 28 Dec 2016
Municipalities hit
1
counties
Started on
19 Dec
2016
Heat detections
118
in a single hotspot: 43 MW
Danger at start
26
High · FWI index
Average daily power
90MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 19 Dec28 Dec
29 Dec 2016

How it evolved, day by day

19 Dec 2016 · 27 MW · 5 20 Dec 2016 · 30 MW · 3 22 Dec 2016 · 28 MW · 5 23 Dec 2016 · 404 MW · 57 24 Dec 2016 · 55 MW · 12 25 Dec 2016 · 100 MW · 8 26 Dec 2016 · 20 MW · 5 28 Dec 2016 · 119 MW · 15 29 Dec 2016 · 30 MW · 3
19 Dec 22 Dec 23 Dec 24 Dec 26 Dec 29 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

34°high
56km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 19 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.6% of the area of London (26 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

  1. Maruzi where it started
    2,599 ha reached on 17 Dec
    1.4 %

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.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2015
Built-up area7.2 ha
Residents≈ 1,200

Inside the perimeter there were about 7.2 hectares of built-up land and about 1,200 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

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 Rain Danger (FWI)
19 Dec 32.8 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
20 Dec 33.7 °C 18 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Dec 33.4 °C 22 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Dec 33.8 °C 23 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
23 Dec 33.9 °C 16 % 56 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
24 Dec 33.9 °C 21 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
25 Dec 34.2 °C 21 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
26 Dec 34.5 °C 20 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
27 Dec 34.1 °C 18 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
28 Dec 33.4 °C 21 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Dec after 33.0 °C 23 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Dec after 32.5 °C 29 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
31 Dec after 31.7 °C 33 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Jan after 32.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
2 Jan after 31.3 °C 35 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
3 Jan after 32.2 °C 29 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
4 Jan after 32.4 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
5 Jan after 34.3 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
6 Jan after 35.0 °C 7 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 54
7 Jan after 35.1 °C 13 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 12 Dec 2016
After · 4 Jan 2017

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 · 118Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Uganda ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Maruzi fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 19 December 2016 and 28 December 2016: 10 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 2,582 hectares (25.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Maruzi (2,599 ha, 1.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 41, class Very high.
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.

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?

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. 118 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.
  • 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.

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.