Earthquakes in Uganda through history

The deadliest was not the strongest: a magnitude 6.2 on February 5, 1994 (13 km SSW of Bundibugyo, Uganda), for which NOAA records 9 deaths. NOAA’s list of significant earthquakes has 3 here, back to 1912. NOAA records deaths in 2 of the events here, 14 in all. NOAA’s record here begins on July 9, 1912 with an earthquake (Kitgum).

• February 5, 1994Earthquake · M 6.213 km SSW of Bundibugyo, Uganda · 9 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI
• June 30, 1952Earthquake · M 6.553 km N of Rukungiri, UgandaUSGS
• March 18, 1945Earthquake · M 6.424 km SW of Sembabule, Uganda · 5 deaths (NOAA)USGS · NOAA NCEI
• July 9, 1912Earthquake · M 6.8KitgumNOAA NCEI
• July 9, 1912Earthquake · M 6.142 km N of Gulu, UgandaUSGS

• An event counts for Uganda when it began inside its borders. Damage can reach across them.
• USGS counts here start at magnitude 6: the catalogue’s smaller quakes thin out going back, where few instruments listened.
• NOAA lists significant events only: earthquakes that killed, did about $1 million of damage, reached magnitude 7.5 or intensity X, or raised a tsunami, and eruptions and tsunamis by like measures. Magnitudes before 1900 are its estimates from written accounts.
• Deaths are NOAA’s total for each event, wherever people died, its tsunami and fires included. A tsunami counts the dead its runup records give for this place: NOAA’s total for a tsunami includes its source quake’s.
• A tsunami from elsewhere counts where one of its runups killed or rose a metre or more.
• The map frames the box around Uganda, its neighbours’ quakes included, so its count runs higher than this page’s.
• Counted to October 19, 2026, as is the map. The last 30 days ask USGS again.

How the layers work, where their data comes from and what they can’t tell you: Earthquakes, live, The world through history