Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Bela-Bela
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 714 fire detections seen from space; 292 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 1,276.
Two readings from space. Fire detections are hot spots a VIIRS satellite saw as it passed, each about 375 m across, counted where they fall in the place: a big fire gives many, a short one between passes none. Burnt area is the ground that looks burnt afterwards, from Sentinel-3 at 300 m, in hectares. Neither is a fire report from the ground.
The last twelve months
- 714Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 292 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 8 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 2 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 2 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 7 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 4 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 28 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 177 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 83 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 187 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 206 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 11 ha burnt (0.003% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 11 ha burnt (0.003% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 204 ha burnt (0.060% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 66 ha burnt (0.019% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| June 2026 | not out yet |
| July 2026 | not out yet |
| August 2026 | not out yet |
| September 2026 | not out yet |
| October 2026 | not out yet |
| Month | Detections | Nominal or high confidence | NOAA-20 (second reading) | Burnt | Share of the place | Land seen |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| October 2026 | 206 | 188 | 71 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 187 | 164 | 184 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 83 | 71 | 91 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 177 | 168 | 214 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 28 | 24 | 25 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 5 | 66 ha | 0.019% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 204 ha | 0.060% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 7 | 6 | 2 | 11 ha | 0.003% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 11 ha | 0.003% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 2 | 2 | 6 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 8 | 2 | 12 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
NOAA-20 carries the same instrument as S-NPP and passes about 50 minutes apart, so its count is a second reading of the same fires, not extra fires. “Land seen” is the share of the place’s land the burnt-area product saw often enough that month to tell.
The worst years
- 20231,276 fire detections, most in September 2023; 17,526 ha burnt
- 2024885 fire detections, most in August 2024; 15,106 ha burnt
- 2018723 fire detections, most in September 2018
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 17,526 ha (5.2% of the place); 2024, 15,106 ha (4.4% of the place); 2025, 6,670 ha (2.0% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 704 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 514 | 6,670 ha | 2.0% |
| 2024 | 885 | 15,106 ha | 4.4% |
| 2023 | 1,276 | 17,526 ha | 5.2% |
| 2022 | 433 | 4,657 ha | 1.4% |
| 2021 | 366 | 5,983 ha | 1.8% |
| 2020 | 248 | 1,516 ha | 0.45% |
| 2019 | 368 | 4,042 ha | 1.2% |
| 2018 | 723 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 568 | · | · |
| 2016 | 104 | · | · |
| 2015 | 557 | · | · |
| 2014 | 375 | · | · |
| 2013 | 353 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 286 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
Each ward
- Ward 1 (Bela-Bela)
- Ward 2 (Bela-Bela)
- Ward 3 (Bela-Bela)
- Ward 4
- Ward 5 (Bela-Bela)
- Ward 6 (Bela-Bela)
- Ward 7
- Ward 8 (Rust de Winter, Rapotokwane)
- Ward 9 (Pienaarsrivier)
Places in each ward: © OpenStreetMap contributors.
Everything we hold for Bela-Bela, on one page
Source
Seen from space by American and European satellites: not fires reported on the ground.
How we worked this out
What we changed: we counted FIRMS’s detections (presumed vegetation fires only) by the 2026 ward their position falls in, and summed CLMS’s burned fraction times each pixel’s area over each ward; municipalities, districts and provinces are the sums of their wards.
Fire detections: we acknowledge the use of data and/or imagery from NASA’s Fire Information for Resource Management System (FIRMS), part of NASA’s LANCE (VIIRS 375 m, S-NPP and NOAA-20). Burnt area: generated using European Union’s Copernicus Land Monitoring Service information (Burnt Area 300 m version 4, DOI 10.2909/8fa58061-28ab-49bb-9b77-c26b50733e34), modified; this does not mean the European Union endorses us.
Dataset: burnt area and fire, release of 12 November 2026.