How long did the Kannaland fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 January 2023 to 29 January 2023 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 January 2023 to 28 January 2023.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,966 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Kannaland (6,985 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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.

ZA · South Africa · 2023-01-17 → 2023-01-29

Kannaland fire, January 2023 Kannaland

Out · last detection 29 Jan 2023, 23:30 UTC

The fire started on 17 January 2023 in Kannaland, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 13 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 6,966 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 52th largest in Western Cape since 2016 (of 164 with a page). Number 13 in South Africa in 2023, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Kannaland · 2017 Kannaland · 2025 Kannaland · 2017 Hessequa · 2018

Burnt area: 6,966ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 13days; 17 Jan 2023 – 29 Jan 2023
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 17 Jan; 2023
Heat detections: 399; in a single hotspot: 196 MW
Danger at start: 22; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 490MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 17 Jan29 Jan

Play back 29 Jan 2023

How it evolved, day by day

18 Jan 20 Jan 22 Jan 23 Jan 24 Jan 26 Jan 28 Jan

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

The weather it burned in

36°high

68km/h · peak gust

16%lowest humidity

It had gone 11 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.5 mm on 6 Feb.

This area had burned before

8% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 181 ha in 2017, 373 ha in 2022.

181 ha Kannaland fire, February 2017 13,723 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 4.4% of the area of London (70 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

Kannaland where it started

6,985 ha reached on 18 Jan

1.5 %

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
17 Jan	27.4 °C	45 %	44 km/h	0.3 mm	High 22
18 Jan	31.4 °C	37 %	46 km/h	1.9 mm	Moderate 17
19 Jan	24.4 °C	51 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 17
20 Jan	29.3 °C	32 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
21 Jan	29.3 °C	33 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	High 28
22 Jan	23.9 °C	41 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 27
23 Jan	35.5 °C	16 %	60 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 47
24 Jan	22.5 °C	31 %	68 km/h	0.5 mm	Very high 39
25 Jan	23.5 °C	32 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
26 Jan	29.9 °C	23 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
27 Jan	29.5 °C	31 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
28 Jan	19.9 °C	52 %	55 km/h	6.9 mm	Very low 4
29 Jan	20.5 °C	39 %	49 km/h	0.5 mm	Low 11
30 Jan after	22.9 °C	31 %	51 km/h	0.0 mm	High 22
31 Jan after	27.6 °C	30 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
1 Feb after	23.6 °C	42 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	High 25
2 Feb after	25.2 °C	36 %	47 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
3 Feb after	26.0 °C	34 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	High 26
4 Feb after	30.6 °C	33 %	47 km/h	0.6 mm	High 27
5 Feb after	26.9 °C	42 %	56 km/h	0.4 mm	High 31
6 Feb after	25.4 °C	50 %	43 km/h	1.5 mm	Moderate 12

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 10 Jan 2023

After · 5 Feb 2023

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.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 27 January 2023 the air beside the fire reached 28 µg/m³ of PM2.5, but no daily average passed the WHO guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak28 µg/m³

Days over the guideline0 days

PM1040 µg/m³

Optical depth0.41

WHO 15

1516171819202122232425262728293031

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 · 399Every 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 Kannaland fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 17 January 2023 to 29 January 2023 (13 days). The perimeter dates it from 17 January 2023 to 28 January 2023.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 6,966 hectares (69.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Kannaland (6,985 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 35.5 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 68 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

History of this page · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

27 October 2026 Last day with fire: 28 January 2023 → 29 January 2023.

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?

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 17 January 2023 to 28 January 2023. 399 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.

Where it burned