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Chief Albert Luthuli fire, 16 July 2026 Chief Albert Luthuli

Out · last detection 23 Jul 2026, 23:05 UTC

The fire started on 16 July 2026 in Chief Albert Luthuli, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 9 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,930 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 92th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 82 in South Africa in 2026, of 156.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Chief Albert Luthuli · 2016Chief Albert Luthuli · 2019Chief Albert Luthuli · 2026Emakhazeni · 2019

Burnt area
2,930ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
9days
16 Jul 2026 – 24 Jul 2026
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
16 Jul
2026
Heat detections
69
in a single hotspot: 73 MW
Danger at start
32
High · FWI index
Average daily power
119MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 16 Jul24 Jul
23 Jul 2026

How it evolved, day by day

17 Jul 2026 · 6 MW · 5 18 Jul 2026 · 57 MW · 17 19 Jul 2026 · 20 MW · 8 20 Jul 2026 · 5 MW · 5 21 Jul 2026 · 131 MW · 12 22 Jul 2026 · 263 MW · 11 23 Jul 2026 · 350 MW · 11
17 Jul 18 Jul 19 Jul 20 Jul 21 Jul 22 Jul 23 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

22°high
42km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 4 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

94% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,650 ha in 2016, 1,271 ha in 2018, 1,181 ha in 2019, 1,851 ha in 2020, 586 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,760 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.9% of the area of London (29 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. Chief Albert Luthuli where it started
    2,937 ha reached on 17 Jul
    0.5 %

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 2025
Built-up area1.1 ha
Residents≈ 40

Inside the perimeter there were about 1.1 hectares of built-up land and about 40 residents (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
18 Jul 22.3 °C 18 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
19 Jul 21.7 °C 15 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
20 Jul 20.3 °C 18 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
21 Jul 20.6 °C 20 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
22 Jul 20.0 °C 34 % 20 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
23 Jul 21.1 °C 26 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
24 Jul 16.8 °C 24 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
25 Jul after 15.2 °C 51 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
26 Jul after 17.8 °C 39 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
27 Jul after 20.0 °C 28 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
28 Jul after 16.0 °C 42 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
29 Jul after 16.3 °C 45 % 21 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 19
30 Jul after 18.8 °C 34 % 40 km/h 0.3 mm High 24
31 Jul after 14.4 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
1 Aug after 15.8 °C 23 % 22 km/h 0.0 mm High 24
2 Aug after 17.9 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 27

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 9 Jul 2026
After · 31 Jul 2026

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

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 23 July 2026 the air beside the fire reached 47 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 25: 1.7 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak47 µg/m³
Days over the guideline5 days
PM1048 µg/m³
Optical depth0.35
1617181920212223242526
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 69Every 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 Chief Albert Luthuli fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 16 July 2026 to 24 July 2026 (9 days). The perimeter dates it from 18 July 2026 to 23 July 2026.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,930 hectares (29.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Chief Albert Luthuli (2,937 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 22.3 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 42 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 35, class 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 · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 23 July 2026 → 24 July 2026.
  2. Start date: 18 July 2026 → 16 July 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 18 July 2026 to 23 July 2026. 69 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 2025, 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.