How long did the Dannhauser fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2022 and 10 September 2022: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,260 hectares (22.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire entered 3 municipalities: Dannhauser (2,067 ha, 1.2 %); Phumelela (108 ha, 0.0 %); Alfred Duma (97 ha, 0.0 %).

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.

ZA · South Africa · 2022-09-09 → 2022-09-10

Dannhauser fire, September 2022 Dannhauser, Phumelela, Alfred Duma

Out · last detection 10 Sept 2022, 11:16 UTC

The fire started on 9 September 2022 in Dannhauser, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,260 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 133th largest in KwaZulu-Natal since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 120 in South Africa in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Phumelela · 2021 Phumelela · 2018 Phumelela · 2017 Dannhauser · 2019

Burnt area: 2,260ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 2days; 9 Sept 2022 – 10 Sept 2022
Municipalities hit: 3; municipalities
Started on: 9 Sept; 2022
Heat detections: 66; in a single hotspot: 221 MW
Average daily power: 862MW; detected power per day, on average

Play back 10 Sept 2022

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 9 Sept10 Sept

How it evolved, day by day

9 Sept 10 Sept

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

This area had burned before

61% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,359 ha in 2020, 78 ha in 2021.

78 ha Phumelela fire, September 2021 3,670 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 1.4% of the area of London (23 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

Dannhauser where it started

2,067 ha reached on 9 Sept

1.2 %
Phumelela

108 ha

0.0 %
Alfred Duma

97 ha reached on 10 Sept

0.0 %

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

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 2 Sept 2022

After · 17 Sept 2022

Before After

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 · 66Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Dannhauser fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 September 2022 and 10 September 2022: 2 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,260 hectares (22.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire entered 3 municipalities: Dannhauser (2,067 ha, 1.2 %); Phumelela (108 ha, 0.0 %); Alfred Duma (97 ha, 0.0 %).
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

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

What really happened?

Your connection to the fire (optional) Email (optional)

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 66 Suomi-NPP VIIRS detections on those dates.
We have not matched this page with any official record.

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.

Where it burned