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Moses Kotane fire, 4 September 2023 Moses Kotane, Thabazimbi

Out · last detection 7 Sept 2023, 22:44 UTC

The fire started on 4 September 2023 in Moses Kotane, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,626 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 102th largest in North West since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 97 in South Africa in 2023, of 150.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Moses Kotane · 2017Moses Kotane · 2026Moses Kotane · 2023Moses Kotane · 2017

Burnt area
2,626ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
4 Sept 2023 – 7 Sept 2023
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
4 Sept
2023
Heat detections
113
in a single hotspot: 75 MW
Danger at start
50
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
582MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Sept7 Sept
7 Sept 2023

How it evolved, day by day

5 Sept 2023 · 772 MW · 26 6 Sept 2023 · 387 MW · 17 7 Sept 2023 · 587 MW · 70
5 Sept 6 Sept 7 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
33km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 44 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 222 ha in 2017, 305 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.7% of the area of London (26 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. Moses Kotane where it started
    2,263 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.4 %
  2. Thabazimbi
    370 ha reached on 5 Sept
    0.0 %

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 area4.2 ha
Residents≈ 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 4.2 hectares of built-up land and about 20 residents (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)
4 Sept 32.5 °C 13 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
5 Sept 32.4 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
6 Sept 31.8 °C 9 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 50
7 Sept 30.4 °C 13 % 26 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
8 Sept after 31.9 °C 17 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
9 Sept after 32.9 °C 16 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
10 Sept after 33.8 °C 13 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
11 Sept after 31.8 °C 12 % 55 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 70
12 Sept after 23.3 °C 22 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
13 Sept after 21.8 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
14 Sept after 26.2 °C 28 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
15 Sept after 32.7 °C 11 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
16 Sept after 33.9 °C 5 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
17 Sept after 30.6 °C 8 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 28 Aug 2023
After · 14 Sept 2023

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 8 September 2023 the air beside the fire reached 98 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 40: 2.6 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak98 µg/m³
Days over the guideline2 days
PM10141 µg/m³
Optical depth0.63
2345678910
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 · 113Every 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 Moses Kotane fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 4 September 2023 and 7 September 2023: 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 2,626 hectares (26.3 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Moses Kotane (2,263 ha, 0.4 %); Thabazimbi (370 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 32.5 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 33 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 50, class Extreme.
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. 113 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.