Nwoya fire, 9 February 2023 Nwoya
The fire started on 9 February 2023 in Nwoya, Uganda, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,079 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 274th largest in Northern Region since 2016 (of 1377 with a page). Number 10 in Uganda in 2023, of 66.
Compare with…
Suggestions: Nwoya · 2017Nwoya · 2022Nwoya · 2016Nwoya · 2021
- Burnt area
- 2,079ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 12days
- 9 Feb 2023 – 20 Feb 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- counties
- Started on
- 9 Feb
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 78
- in a single hotspot: 158 MW
- Average daily power
- 268MW
- 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
99% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 930 ha in 2016, 1,956 ha in 2017, 2 ha in 2018, 294 ha in 2019, 4 ha in 2020, 551 ha in 2021, 1,795 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,064 ha that had burned before.
- 1,827 ha Nwoya fire, January 2017 4,037 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,795 ha Nwoya fire, January 2022 4,253 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 865 ha Nwoya fire, January 2016 10,951 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 551 ha Nwoya fire, February 2021 1,395 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 249 ha Nwoya fire, February 2019 1,097 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 91 ha Nwoya fire, January 2017 1,912 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 64 ha Nwoya fire, February 2016 1,915 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 45 ha Nwoya fire, January 2019 1,149 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
-
Nwoya where it started2,093 ha reached on 9 Feb0.5 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.
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.
The smoke
CAMS · CopernicusOn 14 February 2023 the air beside the fire reached 91 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 45: 3.0 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 · 78Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 16,324 haNwoya3 January 2026 · 24 days · 9 km away
- 10,951 haNwoya21 January 2016 · 26 days · 14 km away
- 13,858 haKibanda9 February 2016 · 10 days · 26 km away
- 10,795 haBuliisa31 December 2018 · 16 days · 27 km away
- 9,718 haBuliisa3 January 2026 · 17 days · 28 km away
- 9,055 haBuliisa13 December 2016 · 19 days · 32 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Nwoya fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 9 February 2023 to 20 February 2023 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 12 February 2023 to 14 February 2023.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,079 hectares (20.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Nwoya (2,093 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 12 February 2023 to 14 February 2023. 78 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 2025, 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.