Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Ward 5, Emakhazeni
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 489 fire detections seen from space; 558 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2024, 1,646.
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
- 489Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 558 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 14 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 7 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 33 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 69 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 2 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 6 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 5 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 33 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 156 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 37 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 78 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 49 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 | 110 ha burnt (0.079% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 45 ha burnt (0.032% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 128 ha burnt (0.092% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 275 ha burnt (0.20% 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 | 49 | 45 | 57 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 78 | 72 | 74 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 37 | 37 | 34 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 156 | 152 | 184 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 33 | 31 | 34 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 5 | 5 | 7 | 275 ha | 0.20% | 100% |
| April 2026 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 128 ha | 0.092% | 100% |
| March 2026 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 45 ha | 0.032% | 100% |
| February 2026 | 69 | 64 | 63 | 110 ha | 0.079% | 100% |
| January 2026 | 33 | 31 | 23 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| December 2025 | 7 | 5 | 14 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 100% |
| November 2025 | 14 | 14 | 25 | 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
- 20241,646 fire detections, most in July 2024; 24,785 ha burnt
- 20231,169 fire detections, most in July 2023; 16,902 ha burnt
- 2017969 fire detections, most in October 2017
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2024, 24,785 ha (17.8% of the place); 2023, 16,902 ha (12.2% of the place); 2019, 12,521 ha (9.0% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 468 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 871 | 9,629 ha | 6.9% |
| 2024 | 1,646 | 24,785 ha | 17.8% |
| 2023 | 1,169 | 16,902 ha | 12.2% |
| 2022 | 671 | 8,222 ha | 5.9% |
| 2021 | 685 | 10,671 ha | 7.7% |
| 2020 | 751 | 12,449 ha | 9.0% |
| 2019 | 969 | 12,521 ha | 9.0% |
| 2018 | 670 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 969 | · | · |
| 2016 | 868 | · | · |
| 2015 | 770 | · | · |
| 2014 | 790 | · | · |
| 2013 | 802 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 961 | · | · |
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.