Skip to content
worldfires
en
ZA · South Africa · →

Bushbuckridge fire, September 2017 Bushbuckridge

Out · last detection 13 Sept 2017, 23:52 UTC

The fire started on 6 September 2017 in Bushbuckridge, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 5,714 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 23th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 33 in South Africa in 2017, of 128.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Bushbuckridge · 2025Nkomazi · 2023Mbombela · 2021Bushbuckridge · 2024

Burnt area
5,714ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
6 Sept 2017 – 13 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
6 Sept
2017
Heat detections
200
in a single hotspot: 162 MW
Danger at start
46
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
432MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 6 Sept13 Sept
13 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

6 Sept 2017 · 7 MW · 4 7 Sept 2017 · 1,017 MW · 65 8 Sept 2017 · 1,048 MW · 91 9 Sept 2017 · 431 MW · 36 10 Sept 2017 · 89 MW · 3 13 Sept 2017 · 1 MW · 1
6 Sept 7 Sept 8 Sept 9 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
34km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.2 mm on 17 Sept.

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 3.6% of the area of London (57 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. Bushbuckridge where it started
    5,755 ha reached on 6 Sept
    0.6 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
6 Sept 33.9 °C 15 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
7 Sept 33.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept 34.7 °C 21 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept 33.0 °C 22 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
10 Sept 31.6 °C 27 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
11 Sept 35.4 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Sept 34.7 °C 18 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
13 Sept 38.2 °C 11 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
14 Sept after 31.5 °C 26 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
15 Sept after 27.0 °C 43 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
16 Sept after 35.1 °C 21 % 58 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
17 Sept after 21.3 °C 55 % 68 km/h 1.2 mm High 24

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 30 Aug 2017
After · 20 Sept 2017

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 · 200Every 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 Bushbuckridge fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 6 September 2017 to 13 September 2017 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 September 2017 to 10 September 2017.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 5,714 hectares (57.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Bushbuckridge (5,755 ha, 0.6 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 34.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 34 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, class Very high.
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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 2026.

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.
  • Dates adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 6 September 2017 to 10 September 2017. 200 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 2015, 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.