Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 25, Ingquza Hill
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 203 fire detections seen from space; 1,079 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2019, 378.
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
- 203Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 1,079 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 0 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 0 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 60 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 65 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 45 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| November 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 16 ha burnt (0.057% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 56 ha burnt (0.20% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 270 ha burnt (0.96% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 737 ha burnt (2.6% 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 | 1 | 1 | 0 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 10 | 9 | 12 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 5 | 5 | 4 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 45 | 43 | 46 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 65 | 65 | 51 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 60 | 57 | 58 | 737 ha | 2.6% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 3 | 2 | 21 | 270 ha | 0.96% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 5 | 5 | 5 | 56 ha | 0.20% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 16 ha | 0.057% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 6 | 3 | 4 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 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
- 2019378 fire detections, most in July 2019; 4,267 ha burnt
- 2018310 fire detections, most in June 2018
- 2012297 fire detections, most in June 2012
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2020, 5,037 ha (18.0% of the place); 2024, 4,916 ha (17.5% of the place); 2019, 4,267 ha (15.2% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 203 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 233 | 2,949 ha | 10.5% |
| 2024 | 257 | 4,916 ha | 17.5% |
| 2023 | 241 | 3,557 ha | 12.7% |
| 2022 | 228 | 3,218 ha | 11.5% |
| 2021 | 218 | 3,263 ha | 11.6% |
| 2020 | 270 | 5,037 ha | 18.0% |
| 2019 | 378 | 4,267 ha | 15.2% |
| 2018 | 310 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 209 | · | · |
| 2016 | 170 | · | · |
| 2015 | 194 | · | · |
| 2014 | 296 | · | · |
| 2013 | 290 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 297 | · | · |
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.