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Musina fire, September 2018 Musina, Collins Chabane

Out · last detection 17 Sept 2018, 12:19 UTC

The fire started on 15 September 2018 in Musina, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 3 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,311 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 97th largest in Limpopo since 2016 (of 218 with a page). Number 41 in South Africa in 2018, of 96.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Musina · 2021Collins Chabane · 2024Collins Chabane · 2022Collins Chabane · 2023

Burnt area
3,311ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
3days
15 Sept 2018 – 17 Sept 2018
Municipalities hit
2
municipalities
Started on
15 Sept
2018
Heat detections
105
in a single hotspot: 67 MW
Danger at start
48
Very high · FWI index
Average daily power
502MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Sept17 Sept
17 Sept 2018

How it evolved, day by day

16 Sept 2018 · 941 MW · 96 17 Sept 2018 · 64 MW · 9
16 Sept 17 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

37°high
42km/h · peak gust
16%lowest humidity

It had gone 7 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 2.1% of the area of London (33 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. Musina where it started
    1,773 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.2 %
  2. Collins Chabane
    1,553 ha reached on 16 Sept
    0.3 %

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 2020
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2020, 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)
16 Sept 31.2 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
17 Sept 37.0 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
18 Sept after 41.3 °C 7 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
19 Sept after 40.6 °C 13 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
20 Sept after 25.6 °C 34 % 62 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 54
21 Sept after 27.2 °C 50 % 38 km/h 0.3 mm High 31
22 Sept after 34.3 °C 23 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
23 Sept after 32.3 °C 31 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
24 Sept after 34.8 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
25 Sept after 35.0 °C 12 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
26 Sept after 38.5 °C 17 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
27 Sept after 34.1 °C 30 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Sept 2018
After · 24 Sept 2018

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 · 105Every 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 Musina fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 15 September 2018 to 17 September 2018 (3 days). The perimeter dates it from 16 September 2018 to 17 September 2018.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 3,311 hectares (33.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Musina (1,773 ha, 0.2 %); Collins Chabane (1,553 ha, 0.3 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 37.0 °C, humidity dropped to 16 % and gusts hit 42 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 16 September 2018 → 15 September 2018.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 16 September 2018 to 17 September 2018. 105 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 2020, 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.