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Overstrand fire, March 2022 Overstrand

Out · last detection 18 Mar 2022, 12:54 UTC

The fire started on 11 March 2022 in Overstrand, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 2,449 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 140th largest in Western Cape since 2016 (of 164 with a page). Number 99 in South Africa in 2022, of 143.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Theewaterskloof · 2025Overstrand · 2026Theewaterskloof · 2019Overstrand · 2026

Burnt area
2,449ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
11 Mar 2022 – 18 Mar 2022
Municipalities hit
1
municipalities
Started on
11 Mar
2022
Heat detections
153
in a single hotspot: 460 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
1.3GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 11 Mar18 Mar
18 Mar 2022

How it evolved, day by day

11 Mar 2022 · 88 MW · 14 12 Mar 2022 · 5,984 MW · 113 13 Mar 2022 · 80 MW · 5 16 Mar 2022 · 239 MW · 6 17 Mar 2022 · 1,355 MW · 14 18 Mar 2022 · 15 MW · 1
11 Mar 12 Mar 13 Mar 16 Mar 17 Mar 18 Mar

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

The weather it burned in

28°high
46km/h · peak gust
51%lowest humidity

It had gone 3 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

43% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,060 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 1.5% of the area of London (24 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. Overstrand where it started
    2,454 ha reached on 11 Mar
    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 2020
Built-up area3.8 ha
Residents≈ 550

Inside the perimeter there were about 3.8 hectares of built-up land and about 550 residents (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)
11 Mar 28.4 °C 51 % 40 km/h 2.1 mm Low 8
12 Mar 27.2 °C 58 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
13 Mar 18.3 °C 62 % 40 km/h 3.4 mm Very low 3
14 Mar 19.6 °C 47 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Low 6
15 Mar 22.9 °C 48 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
16 Mar 24.3 °C 49 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
17 Mar 27.5 °C 39 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
18 Mar 26.8 °C 54 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
19 Mar after 26.4 °C 58 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 20
20 Mar after 24.7 °C 65 % 46 km/h 0.7 mm Moderate 12
21 Mar after 25.9 °C 58 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
22 Mar after 24.4 °C 66 % 50 km/h 0.6 mm Moderate 14
23 Mar after 26.3 °C 56 % 40 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 15

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 4 Mar 2022
After · 25 Mar 2022

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 · 153Every 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 Overstrand fire last?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 11 March 2022 to 18 March 2022 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 11 March 2022 to 13 March 2022.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 2,449 hectares (24.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Overstrand (2,454 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 28.4 °C, humidity dropped to 51 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 15, class Moderate.
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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 11 March 2022 to 13 March 2022. 153 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.