How long did the Newcastle fire last?

GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 September 2019 and 14 September 2019: 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 3,256 hectares (32.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Newcastle (3,269 ha, 1.8 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 · 2019-09-10 → 2019-09-14

Newcastle fire, 10 September 2019 Newcastle

Out · last detection 14 Sept 2019, 12:31 UTC

The fire started on 10 September 2019 in Newcastle, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 5 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 3,256 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 61th largest in KwaZulu-Natal since 2016 (of 171 with a page). Number 51 in South Africa in 2019, of 130.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Newcastle · 2017 Newcastle · 2019 Newcastle · 2020 Phumelela · 2024

Burnt area: 3,256ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 5days; 10 Sept 2019 – 14 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; municipalities
Started on: 10 Sept; 2019
Heat detections: 174; in a single hotspot: 198 MW
Danger at start: 20; Moderate · FWI index
Average daily power: 862MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 10 Sept14 Sept

Play back 14 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

10 Sept 11 Sept 12 Sept 13 Sept 14 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

27°high

60km/h · peak gust

9%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 2.8 mm on 23 Sept.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 649 ha in 2017.

649 ha Newcastle fire, October 2017 3,376 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

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

Newcastle where it started

3,269 ha reached on 10 Sept

1.8 %

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.

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)
10 Sept	23.1 °C	17 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	Moderate 20
11 Sept	26.2 °C	14 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	High 24
12 Sept	27.1 °C	9 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Sept	26.2 °C	13 %	60 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
14 Sept	25.1 °C	17 %	44 km/h	0.1 mm	High 29
15 Sept after	25.8 °C	16 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
16 Sept after	27.3 °C	15 %	22 km/h	0.0 mm	High 29
17 Sept after	28.7 °C	13 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 31
18 Sept after	30.3 °C	8 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
19 Sept after	27.0 °C	27 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 32
20 Sept after	29.6 °C	14 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
21 Sept after	29.1 °C	9 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
22 Sept after	28.7 °C	11 %	50 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 47
23 Sept after	12.9 °C	70 %	40 km/h	2.8 mm	Very low 4

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 3 Sept 2019

After · 21 Sept 2019

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.

Detections table · 174Every 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 Newcastle fire last?: GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 10 September 2019 and 14 September 2019: 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 3,256 hectares (32.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Newcastle (3,269 ha, 1.8 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 27.1 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 60 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 43, 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 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.

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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 174 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.

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