Impendle fire, 28 July 2021 Impendle
The fire started on 28 July 2021 in Impendle, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,212 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.
It is the 137th largest in KwaZulu-Natal since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 130 in South Africa in 2021, of 156.
- Burnt area
- 2,212ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 28 Jul 2021 – 29 Jul 2021
- Municipalities hit
- 1
- municipalities
- Started on
- 28 Jul
- 2021
- Heat detections
- 52
- in a single hotspot: 125 MW
- Energy released
- 1.6GW
- sum of detected power
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
91% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 130 ha in 2016, 158 ha in 2017, 2,013 ha in 2019. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,020 ha that had burned before.
What happened to each town
-
Impendle where it started2,216 ha reached on 28 Jul1.4 %
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.
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 · 52Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 8,607 haImpendleSeptember 2019 · 4 days · 2 km away
- 9,087 haImpendle18 July 2020 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 5,429 haImpendle23 July 2020 · 4 days · 10 km away
- 8,310 haInkosi Langalibalele15 July 2020 · 4 days · 11 km away
- 5,535 haInkosi Langalibalele27 July 2021 · 2 days · 12 km away
- 5,940 haInkosi LangalibaleleJuly 2019 · 2 days · 26 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Impendle fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 28 July 2021 and 29 July 2021: 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 2,212 hectares (22.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire only entered Impendle (2,216 ha, 1.4 %).
- 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
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.