Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 84, City of Cape Town
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 24 fire detections seen from space; 125 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2017, 399.
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
- 24Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 125 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 9 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 14 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| September 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 15 ha burnt (0.14% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 110 ha burnt (1.1% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% 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 | 0 | 0 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 14 | 10 | 13 | 110 ha | 1.1% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 15 ha | 0.14% | 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
- 2017399 fire detections, most in January 2017
- 201646 fire detections, most in January 2016
- 201544 fire detections, most in January 2015
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 472 ha (4.6% of the place); 2025, 126 ha (1.2% of the place); 2022, 101 ha (0.98% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 1 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 28 | 126 ha | 1.2% |
| 2024 | 8 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% |
| 2023 | 40 | 472 ha | 4.6% |
| 2022 | 9 | 101 ha | 0.98% |
| 2021 | 9 | 6.2 ha | 0.060% |
| 2020 | 17 | 48 ha | 0.46% |
| 2019 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% |
| 2018 | 24 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 399 | · | · |
| 2016 | 46 | · | · |
| 2015 | 44 | · | · |
| 2014 | 21 | · | · |
| 2013 | 24 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 42 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019.
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.