Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 5, Phumelela
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 640 fire detections seen from space; 188 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2012, 1,047.
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
- 640Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 188 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 1 fire detection |
| December 2025 | 2 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| February 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| April 2026 | 9 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 1 fire detection |
| June 2026 | 21 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 27 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 327 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 112 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 132 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 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 19 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 169 ha burnt (0.048% 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 | 132 | 121 | 142 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 112 | 109 | 121 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 327 | 320 | 357 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 27 | 27 | 46 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 21 | 20 | 19 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 9 | 9 | 3 | 169 ha | 0.048% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 6 | 5 | 8 | 19 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 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
- 20121,047 fire detections, most in August 2012
- 20181,036 fire detections, most in September 2018
- 20211,026 fire detections, most in September 2021; 21,914 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 33,291 ha (9.5% of the place); 2023, 23,232 ha (6.6% of the place); 2021, 21,914 ha (6.3% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 637 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 390 | 9,066 ha | 2.6% |
| 2024 | 777 | 33,291 ha | 9.5% |
| 2023 | 854 | 23,232 ha | 6.6% |
| 2022 | 635 | 15,293 ha | 4.4% |
| 2021 | 1,026 | 21,914 ha | 6.3% |
| 2020 | 706 | 20,996 ha | 6.0% |
| 2019 | 393 | 8,325 ha | 2.4% |
| 2018 | 1,036 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 932 | · | · |
| 2016 | 268 | · | · |
| 2015 | 504 | · | · |
| 2014 | 849 | · | · |
| 2013 | 872 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 1,047 | · | · |
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.