Chief Albert Luthuli fire, June 2021 Emakhazeni, Chief Albert Luthuli
The fire started on 29 June 2021 in Chief Albert Luthuli, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 6 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,009 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.
It is the 213th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 153 in South Africa in 2021, of 156.
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- Burnt area
- 2,009ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 6days
- 29 Jun 2021 – 4 Jul 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 2
- municipalities
- Started on
- 29 Jun
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 59
- in a single hotspot: 77 MW
- Average daily power
- 114MW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
This area had burned before
93% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 12 ha in 2018, 1,861 ha in 2019.
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
1,479 ha reached on 30 Jun0.3 %
-
Chief Albert Luthuli where it started541 ha reached on 29 Jun0.1 %
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 2020Inside the perimeter there were about 0.31 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · 59Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 4,380 haEmakhazeni6 October 2019 · 4 days · 1 km away
- 3,627 haChief Albert Luthuli24 August 2024 · 5 days · 1 km away
- 4,184 haEmakhazeniAugust 2020 · 4 days · 7 km away
- 3,510 haChief Albert Luthuli4 August 2026 · 3 days · 14 km away
- 4,659 haChief Albert LuthuliJuly 2024 · 2 days · 25 km away
- 5,607 haEmakhazeniSeptember 2016 · 4 days · 30 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Chief Albert Luthuli fire last?
- According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 29 June 2021 to 4 July 2021 (6 days). The perimeter dates it from 29 June 2021 to 1 July 2021.
- How much area did it burn?
- The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,009 hectares (20.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 2 municipalities: Emakhazeni (1,479 ha, 0.3 %); Chief Albert Luthuli (541 ha, 0.1 %).
- 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
- Last day with fire: 1 July 2021 → 4 July 2021.
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
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 29 June 2021 to 1 July 2021. 59 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
- We have not matched this page with any official record.
- 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.
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.