Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Free State
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 5,816 fire detections seen from space; 2,931 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2023, 14,694.
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
- 5,816Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 2,931 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 127 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 149 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 245 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 125 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 104 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 30 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 62 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 326 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 1,066 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1,810 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 881 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 891 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 223 ha burnt (0.002% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 590 ha burnt (0.005% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 513 ha burnt (0.004% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 108 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 162 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 760 ha burnt (0.006% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 575 ha burnt (0.004% 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 | 891 | 788 | 890 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 881 | 853 | 1,079 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1,810 | 1,759 | 2,110 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1,066 | 1,033 | 1,279 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 326 | 315 | 369 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 62 | 62 | 71 | 575 ha | 0.004% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 760 ha | 0.006% | 99% |
| March 2026 | 104 | 102 | 62 | 162 ha | 0.001% | 99% |
| February 2026 | 125 | 108 | 125 | 108 ha | 0.001% | 99% |
| January 2026 | 245 | 211 | 221 | 513 ha | 0.004% | 99% |
| December 2025 | 149 | 138 | 148 | 590 ha | 0.005% | 99% |
| November 2025 | 127 | 105 | 67 | 223 ha | 0.002% | 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
- 202314,694 fire detections, most in September 2023; 369,953 ha burnt
- 202112,617 fire detections, most in July 2021; 345,227 ha burnt
- 201410,204 fire detections, most in September 2014
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2023, 369,953 ha (2.9% of the place); 2021, 345,227 ha (2.7% of the place); 2024, 232,509 ha (1.8% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 5,540 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 4,156 | 56,318 ha | 0.43% |
| 2024 | 8,964 | 232,509 ha | 1.8% |
| 2023 | 14,694 | 369,953 ha | 2.9% |
| 2022 | 8,175 | 134,098 ha | 1.0% |
| 2021 | 12,617 | 345,227 ha | 2.7% |
| 2020 | 7,639 | 180,273 ha | 1.4% |
| 2019 | 4,367 | 78,072 ha | 0.60% |
| 2018 | 6,916 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 7,941 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,384 | · | · |
| 2015 | 5,881 | · | · |
| 2014 | 10,204 | · | · |
| 2013 | 7,754 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 7,229 | · | · |
Detections from February 2012 (S-NPP); burnt area from July 2018, so whole years of it from 2019. A larger place’s figures are the sums of its 2026 wards.
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.