Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 10, Umvoti
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 222 fire detections seen from space; 214 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2013, 296.
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
- 222Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 214 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 28 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 22 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 24 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 16 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 4 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 27 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 50 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 19 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 10 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 19 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 4.1 ha burnt (0.009% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 5.9 ha burnt (0.013% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 21 ha burnt (0.046% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 35 ha burnt (0.079% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 11 ha burnt (0.023% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 23 ha burnt (0.052% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 114 ha burnt (0.25% 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 | 19 | 15 | 18 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 0 | 0 | 2 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 10 | 10 | 6 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 19 | 19 | 48 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 50 | 50 | 29 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 27 | 24 | 46 | 114 ha | 0.25% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 4 | 3 | 1 | 23 ha | 0.052% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 3 | 3 | 11 | 11 ha | 0.023% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 16 | 15 | 26 | 35 ha | 0.079% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 24 | 18 | 28 | 21 ha | 0.046% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 22 | 18 | 27 | 5.9 ha | 0.013% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 28 | 26 | 57 | 4.1 ha | 0.009% | 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
- 2013296 fire detections, most in November 2013
- 2012272 fire detections, most in April 2012
- 2025234 fire detections, most in February 2025; 698 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 1,026 ha (2.3% of the place); 2025, 698 ha (1.6% of the place); 2022, 549 ha (1.2% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 172 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 234 | 698 ha | 1.6% |
| 2024 | 153 | 1,026 ha | 2.3% |
| 2023 | 140 | 502 ha | 1.1% |
| 2022 | 205 | 549 ha | 1.2% |
| 2021 | 209 | 364 ha | 0.81% |
| 2020 | 211 | 305 ha | 0.68% |
| 2019 | 151 | 379 ha | 0.84% |
| 2018 | 206 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 169 | · | · |
| 2016 | 166 | · | · |
| 2015 | 221 | · | · |
| 2014 | 191 | · | · |
| 2013 | 296 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 272 | · | · |
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.