Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 21, Chief Albert Luthuli
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 504 fire detections seen from space; 108 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 920.
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
- 504Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 108 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 6 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 8 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 4 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 0 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 3 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 17 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 110 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 173 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 52 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 131 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 | 67 ha burnt (0.042% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 41 ha burnt (0.025% 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 | 131 | 118 | 134 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 52 | 50 | 50 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 173 | 159 | 160 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 110 | 107 | 155 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 17 | 17 | 24 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 3 | 3 | 4 | 41 ha | 0.025% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| March 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| February 2026 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 67 ha | 0.042% | 99% |
| January 2026 | 4 | 4 | 0 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| December 2025 | 8 | 6 | 2 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| November 2025 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
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
- 2023920 fire detections, most in August 2023; 16,341 ha burnt
- 2024866 fire detections, most in August 2024; 19,875 ha burnt
- 2020826 fire detections, most in September 2020; 12,590 ha burnt
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 19,875 ha (12.4% of the place); 2023, 16,341 ha (10.2% of the place); 2020, 12,590 ha (7.8% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 490 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 496 | 6,547 ha | 4.1% |
| 2024 | 866 | 19,875 ha | 12.4% |
| 2023 | 920 | 16,341 ha | 10.2% |
| 2022 | 279 | 4,961 ha | 3.1% |
| 2021 | 527 | 11,039 ha | 6.9% |
| 2020 | 826 | 12,590 ha | 7.8% |
| 2019 | 691 | 9,576 ha | 6.0% |
| 2018 | 405 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 348 | · | · |
| 2016 | 305 | · | · |
| 2015 | 373 | · | · |
| 2014 | 546 | · | · |
| 2013 | 363 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 406 | · | · |
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.