Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 17, Chief Albert Luthuli
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 620 fire detections seen from space; 1,406 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 1,011.
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
- 620Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 1,406 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 8 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 12 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 29 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 58 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 12 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 65 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 68 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 159 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 102 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 60 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 47 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 16 ha burnt (0.013% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 92 ha burnt (0.074% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 148 ha burnt (0.12% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 2.6 ha burnt (0.002% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 69 ha burnt (0.056% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 1,078 ha burnt (0.87% 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 | 47 | 41 | 33 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 60 | 59 | 47 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 102 | 100 | 119 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 159 | 153 | 196 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 68 | 67 | 75 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 65 | 61 | 55 | 1,078 ha | 0.87% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 69 ha | 0.056% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 2.6 ha | 0.002% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 58 | 56 | 42 | 148 ha | 0.12% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 29 | 21 | 43 | 92 ha | 0.074% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 12 | 10 | 11 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 8 | 8 | 23 | 16 ha | 0.013% | 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
- 20241,011 fire detections, most in July 2024; 21,254 ha burnt
- 2016965 fire detections, most in October 2016
- 2018876 fire detections, most in July 2018
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 21,254 ha (17.1% of the place); 2020, 12,362 ha (9.9% of the place); 2021, 11,550 ha (9.3% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 600 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 428 | 5,663 ha | 4.5% |
| 2024 | 1,011 | 21,254 ha | 17.1% |
| 2023 | 790 | 10,863 ha | 8.7% |
| 2022 | 582 | 8,407 ha | 6.8% |
| 2021 | 789 | 11,550 ha | 9.3% |
| 2020 | 747 | 12,362 ha | 9.9% |
| 2019 | 796 | 10,078 ha | 8.1% |
| 2018 | 876 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 633 | · | · |
| 2016 | 965 | · | · |
| 2015 | 556 | · | · |
| 2014 | 790 | · | · |
| 2013 | 699 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 591 | · | · |
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.