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Kamiesberg fire, January 2016 Kamiesberg

Out · last measured on 13 Jan 2016

The fire started on 9 January 2016 in Kamiesberg, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,691 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 59th largest in Nothern Cape since 2016 (of 101 with a page). Number 47 in South Africa in 2016, of 71.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kamiesberg · 2023

We have the GWIS perimeter for this fire, but the VIIRS sensors did not capture it in enough detail: no day-by-day evolution, but the split by municipality is there.

Burnt area
2,691ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
5days
9 Jan 2016 – 13 Jan 2016
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
9 Jan
2016
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index

Where it burned

The weather it burned in

32°high
54km/h · peak gust
15%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 16 Jan.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (27 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. Kamiesberg where it started
    2,692 ha
    0.2 %

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 2015
Built-up area0.14 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.14 hectares of built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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

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)
9 Jan 31.0 °C 15 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Jan 31.7 °C 16 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
11 Jan 28.4 °C 27 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
12 Jan 27.3 °C 36 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
13 Jan 25.3 °C 44 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
14 Jan after 23.4 °C 46 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
15 Jan after 31.1 °C 25 % 48 km/h 0.3 mm High 36
16 Jan after 33.2 °C 22 % 50 km/h 1.0 mm Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 2 Jan 2016
After · 20 Jan 2016

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

Other fires nearby

All fires in South Africa ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Kamiesberg fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 9 January 2016 and 13 January 2016: 5 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 2,691 hectares (26.9 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Kamiesberg (2,692 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 15 % and gusts hit 54 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 48, class Very 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

No changes since 24 October 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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. No 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 2015, 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.