Skip to content
worldfires
ZA · South Africa · →

Dihlabeng fire, August 2020 Dihlabeng

Out · last detection 17 Aug 2020, 11:52 UTC

The fire started on 14 August 2020 in Dihlabeng, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 78th largest in Free State since 2016 (of 91 with a page). Number 78 in South Africa in 2020, of 95.

Burnt area
2,138ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
14 Aug 2020 – 17 Aug 2020
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
14 Aug
2020
Heat detections
68
in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Energy released
1.1GW
sum of detected power

Where it burned

17 Aug 2020
HOTSPOTS BY DAY 14 Aug17 Aug

How it evolved, day by day

14151617

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

This area had burned before

54% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,146 ha in 2018.

What happened to each town

  1. Dihlabeng where it started
    2,149 ha reached on 14 Aug
    0.4 %

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 · 7 Aug 2020
After · 24 Aug 2020

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 · 68Every 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 Dihlabeng fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 14 August 2020 and 17 August 2020: 4 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 2,138 hectares (21.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Dihlabeng (2,149 ha, 0.4 %).
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

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.

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.