Free tools · Seen from space
Fire in Zululand
Fire in the twelve months to October 2026: 6,193 fire detections seen from space; 2,617 ha burnt in the 7 of those months with burnt area out. The most since 2012: 2013, 10,906.
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
- 6,193Fire detectionsNovember 2025 to October 2026
- 2,617 haBurnt7 of the twelve months; the rest not out yet
Show the numbers
| When or what | Figure |
|---|---|
| November 2025 | 59 fire detections |
| December 2025 | 49 fire detections |
| January 2026 | 80 fire detections |
| February 2026 | 130 fire detections |
| March 2026 | 49 fire detections |
| April 2026 | 51 fire detections |
| May 2026 | 229 fire detections |
| June 2026 | 298 fire detections |
| July 2026 | 1,383 fire detections |
| August 2026 | 1,781 fire detections |
| September 2026 | 1,478 fire detections |
| October 2026 | 606 fire detections |
| November 2025 | 17 ha burnt (0.001% of the place) |
| December 2025 | 0.0 ha burnt (0.000% of the place) |
| January 2026 | 42 ha burnt (0.003% of the place) |
| February 2026 | 507 ha burnt (0.034% of the place) |
| March 2026 | 665 ha burnt (0.045% of the place) |
| April 2026 | 441 ha burnt (0.030% of the place) |
| May 2026 | 945 ha burnt (0.064% 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 | 606 | 536 | 598 | not out yet | · | · |
| September 2026 | 1,478 | 1,386 | 1,493 | not out yet | · | · |
| August 2026 | 1,781 | 1,681 | 1,985 | not out yet | · | · |
| July 2026 | 1,383 | 1,332 | 1,576 | not out yet | · | · |
| June 2026 | 298 | 292 | 285 | not out yet | · | · |
| May 2026 | 229 | 226 | 225 | 945 ha | 0.064% | 99% |
| April 2026 | 51 | 49 | 52 | 441 ha | 0.030% | 99% |
| March 2026 | 49 | 48 | 48 | 665 ha | 0.045% | 99% |
| February 2026 | 130 | 115 | 120 | 507 ha | 0.034% | 99% |
| January 2026 | 80 | 71 | 83 | 42 ha | 0.003% | 99% |
| December 2025 | 49 | 45 | 39 | 0.0 ha | 0.000% | 99% |
| November 2025 | 59 | 50 | 91 | 17 ha | 0.001% | 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
- 201310,906 fire detections, most in August 2013
- 201910,279 fire detections, most in July 2019; 132,834 ha burnt
- 20129,577 fire detections, most in August 2012
By hectares burnt (whole years from 2019): 2019, 132,834 ha (9.0% of the place); 2024, 113,510 ha (7.7% of the place); 2023, 80,403 ha (5.4% of the place).
Every year since 2012
| Year | Fire detections | Burnt | Share of the place |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 (10 months) | 6,085 | 5 months out | · |
| 2025 | 6,097 | 52,665 ha | 3.6% |
| 2024 | 6,964 | 113,510 ha | 7.7% |
| 2023 | 7,781 | 80,403 ha | 5.4% |
| 2022 | 5,363 | 50,320 ha | 3.4% |
| 2021 | 7,708 | 77,725 ha | 5.3% |
| 2020 | 5,908 | 54,727 ha | 3.7% |
| 2019 | 10,279 | 132,834 ha | 9.0% |
| 2018 | 5,208 | 6 months out | · |
| 2017 | 6,009 | · | · |
| 2016 | 2,584 | · | · |
| 2015 | 3,496 | · | · |
| 2014 | 8,558 | · | · |
| 2013 | 10,906 | · | · |
| 2012 (11 months) | 9,577 | · | · |
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.
Everything we hold for Zululand, on one page
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.