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Big Five Hlabisa fire, 28 June 2019 Big Five Hlabisa, Mtubatuba

Out · last detection 10 Jul 2019, 22:43 UTC

The fire started on 28 June 2019 in Big Five Hlabisa, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 12 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 9,477 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the largest fire in KwaZulu-Natal since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 5 in South Africa in 2019, of 130.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Big Five Hlabisa · 2021Big Five Hlabisa · 2026Big Five Hlabisa · 2025Big Five Hlabisa · 2024

Burnt area
9,477ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
12days
28 Jun 2019 – 9 Jul 2019
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
28 Jun
2019
Heat detections
289
in a single hotspot: 48 MW
Danger at start
33
High · FWI index
Average daily power
165MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Jun9 Jul
10 Jul 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Jun 2019 · 3 MW · 2 30 Jun 2019 · 2 MW · 1 1 Jul 2019 · 69 MW · 36 2 Jul 2019 · 419 MW · 71 3 Jul 2019 · 355 MW · 48 4 Jul 2019 · 108 MW · 29 5 Jul 2019 · 87 MW · 11 6 Jul 2019 · 276 MW · 34 7 Jul 2019 · 410 MW · 35 8 Jul 2019 · 248 MW · 20 9 Jul 2019 · 2 MW · 1 10 Jul 2019 · 0 MW · 1
28 Jun 1 Jul 2 Jul 3 Jul 5 Jul 7 Jul 9 Jul

Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.

The weather it burned in

31°high
75km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 6% of the area of London (95 km² against 1,583 km²).

London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).

This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.

What happened to each town

  1. Big Five Hlabisa where it started
    9,415 ha reached on 28 Jun
    2.7 %
  2. Mtubatuba
    112 ha
    0.1 %

Burnt area inside each municipality, from crossing the GWIS perimeter with administrative boundaries. The distance runs from the point marking the centre of each area to the nearest fire: staying a kilometre away does not mean it reached the houses.

People and buildings inside the perimeter

GHSL 2020
Built-up area12 ha
Residents≈ 800

Inside the perimeter there were about 12 hectares of built-up land and about 800 residents (GHSL 2020, satellite-based estimate).

This is an estimate on 100 m cells, made from satellite imagery and census data: it does not mean that homes burned or that anyone was harmed. The perimeter also contains land that never burned.

Source: Global Human Settlement Layer (GHS-BUILT-S and GHS-POP R2023A), European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC), © European Union, CC BY 4.0. Sum inside the perimeter computed by WorldFires. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu

The weather day by day

ECMWF ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, the standard reference for past weather, and the Canadian Fire Weather Index (the same system Copernicus uses), computed by WorldFires from that data. Days after the fire run until the first rain.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Climate Change Service (ERA5)

Day High Min. humidity Peak gust Rain Danger (FWI)
28 Jun 29.1 °C 24 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
29 Jun 26.3 °C 46 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
30 Jun 30.9 °C 22 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
1 Jul 29.8 °C 20 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
2 Jul 24.2 °C 24 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
3 Jul 26.5 °C 21 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
4 Jul 27.1 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
5 Jul 22.7 °C 30 % 75 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
6 Jul 25.6 °C 31 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
7 Jul 27.4 °C 15 % 51 km/h 0.2 mm Very high 47
8 Jul 24.2 °C 44 % 26 km/h 0.1 mm High 25
9 Jul 26.0 °C 37 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
10 Jul after 30.8 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
11 Jul after 27.9 °C 35 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
12 Jul after 24.8 °C 35 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Jul after 25.1 °C 47 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
14 Jul after 25.9 °C 46 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jul after 28.2 °C 31 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
16 Jul after 27.4 °C 36 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
17 Jul after 30.7 °C 14 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
18 Jul after 31.1 °C 13 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
19 Jul after 32.5 °C 9 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63

Before and after, from space

Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.

Before · 21 Jun 2019
After · 16 Jul 2019

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

Detections table · 289Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
⬇ Download CSV Times in UTC. Each detection is a 375 m pixel: a large fire yields hundreds per pass.
Date and timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Big Five Hlabisa fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 28 June 2019 to 9 July 2019 (12 days). The perimeter dates it from 30 June 2019 to 8 July 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 9,477 hectares (94.8 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Big Five Hlabisa (9,415 ha, 2.7 %); Mtubatuba (112 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.9 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 75 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 51, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?
From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of South Africa (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

Where to verify it

A satellite detection is not an official report. Final figures and the fire’s status are published by each country’s emergency service.

Emergency number: 10177 · 112 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 8 July 2019 → 9 July 2019.
  2. Start date: 30 June 2019 → 28 June 2019.

RSS Changes to this page

Does something look wrong on this page?

This page is built from satellite data and official records, and it sometimes gets things wrong: the wrong dates, the wrong town, two fires merged into one, or something that was not a wildfire at all. If you know this fire first-hand (you live nearby, saw it, fought it or reported on it), tell us what really happened and we will check it.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

We will only use your email to reply about this report. Privacy. This is not an emergency service: if there is a fire now, call 10177 · 112.

How we know this
  • Perimeter: GWIS (Copernicus), rebuilt from heat detections rather than mapped on imagery; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 30 June 2019 to 8 July 2019. 289 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
  • We have not matched this page with any official record.
  • Weather: Copernicus ERA5 reanalysis at the fire location, in cells of about 25 km.
  • Built-up area and population come from the JRC Global Human Settlement Layer (epoch 2020, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.

How we build fire pages: methodology ›

Where this data comes from

The perimeter comes from the Copernicus Global Wildfire Information System (GWIS), which rebuilds it from MODIS and VIIRS heat detections and publishes it under CC BY 4.0. It is not measured on imagery as in Europe, so it is an estimate. Heat detections come from the VIIRS sensors aboard Suomi-NPP and NOAA-20, distributed by NASA FIRMS at 375 m resolution. Municipal boundaries come from geoBoundaries ADM3 (Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Intergovernmental Organisations (CC BY 3.0 IGO)). The area per municipality is computed by WorldFires by crossing the perimeter with those boundaries, so it may differ from each country’s official figure.