Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 16, Chief Albert Luthuli
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 369 fire detections seen from space; 522 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2017, 688.
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
- 369Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 522 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 5 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 4 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 39 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 36 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 88 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 65 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 52 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 36 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 33 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 | 3.2 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 129 ha burnt (0.21% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 11 ha burnt (0.017% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 28 ha burnt (0.045% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 351 ha burnt (0.57% 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 | 33 | 31 | 38 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 36 | 34 | 33 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 52 | 48 | 65 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 65 | 62 | 95 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 88 | 88 | 61 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 36 | 36 | 34 | 351 ha | 0.57% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 28 ha | 0.045% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 6 | 6 | 9 | 11 ha | 0.017% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 39 | 30 | 36 | 129 ha | 0.21% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 5 | 4 | 10 | 3.2 ha | 0.005% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 5 | 5 | 3 | 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
- 2017688 fire detections, most in August 2017
- 2018600 fire detections, most in September 2018
- 2019596 fire detections, most in July 2019; 8,633 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 10,933 ha (17.7% of the place); 2019, 8,633 ha (13.9% of the place); 2020, 7,262 ha (11.7% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 360 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 378 | 5,933 ha | 9.6% |
| 2024 | 527 | 10,933 ha | 17.7% |
| 2023 | 556 | 6,581 ha | 10.6% |
| 2022 | 412 | 4,464 ha | 7.2% |
| 2021 | 378 | 5,451 ha | 8.8% |
| 2020 | 491 | 7,262 ha | 11.7% |
| 2019 | 596 | 8,633 ha | 13.9% |
| 2018 | 600 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 688 | · | · |
| 2016 | 307 | · | · |
| 2015 | 346 | · | · |
| 2014 | 576 | · | · |
| 2013 | 465 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 382 | · | · |
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.