Thembisile fire, July 2023 Thembisile, Emalahleni, Steve Tshwete
The fire started on 30 July 2023 in Thembisile, South Africa, and satellites saw it burning for 2 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 4,671 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.
It is the 31th largest in Mpumalanga since 2016 (of 214 with a page). Number 36 in South Africa in 2023, of 150.
Compare with…
- Burnt area
- 4,671ha
- GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
- Duration
- 2days
- 30 Jul 2023 – 31 Jul 2023
- Municipalities hit
- 3
- municipalities
- Started on
- 30 Jul
- 2023
- Heat detections
- 153
- in a single hotspot: 145 MW
- Danger at start
- 38
- High · FWI index
- Average daily power
- 1.2GW
- detected power per day, on average
Where it burned
How it evolved, day by day
Fire radiative power detected each day, in megawatts, and number of hotspots. The magenta bar marks the peak day.
The weather it burned in
It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.
This area had burned before
71% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,663 ha in 2016, 71 ha in 2017, 1,870 ha in 2018, 1,402 ha in 2019, 649 ha in 2020, 1,262 ha in 2021. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 3,325 ha that had burned before.
- 1,465 ha Thembisile fire, August 2018 2,238 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 1,402 ha Thembisile fire, October 2019 2,257 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 940 ha Steve Tshwete fire, August 2016 2,277 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
- 405 ha Thembisile fire, September 2018 2,967 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire
How big is it?
London boundary: geoBoundaries · Office for National Statistics (Open Government Licence v3.0).
Paris boundary: geoBoundaries · Institut national de l'information géographique et forestière (IGN-F) (Etalab Open License 2.0).
Madrid boundary: geoBoundaries · Open Data ESRI, IGN Central Registry of Cartography Area (CC BY 4.0).
Berlin boundary: geoBoundaries · Federal Agency for Cartography and Geodesy (dl-de/by-2-0).
This compares size, not location: both shapes are at the same scale, north up, centred on each other.
What happened to each town
-
Thembisile where it started4,089 ha reached on 30 Jul1.7 %
-
487 ha reached on 30 Jul0.2 %
-
119 ha reached on 31 Jul0.0 %
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 2025Inside the perimeter there were about 2.5 hectares of built-up land and about 90 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) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 30 Jul | 14.1 °C | 22 % | 49 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 31 Jul | 17.8 °C | 10 % | 34 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 35 |
| 1 Aug after | 17.7 °C | 14 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 39 |
| 2 Aug after | 16.4 °C | 35 % | 28 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 27 |
| 3 Aug after | 16.5 °C | 34 % | 25 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 4 Aug after | 16.7 °C | 31 % | 24 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 5 Aug after | 17.6 °C | 30 % | 18 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 24 |
| 6 Aug after | 20.4 °C | 19 % | 22 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 29 |
| 7 Aug after | 24.6 °C | 5 % | 26 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 8 Aug after | 23.8 °C | 5 % | 17 km/h | 0.0 mm | Very high 41 |
| 9 Aug after | 19.7 °C | 33 % | 42 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 38 |
| 10 Aug after | 18.9 °C | 34 % | 30 km/h | 0.0 mm | High 28 |
Before and after, from space
Drag the line to compare the same ground before the fire and after it.
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 · CopernicusOn 28 July 2023 the air beside the fire reached 44 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 22: 1.5 times the WHO daily guideline (15).
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 · 153Every satellite heat detection, one by one, with time, satellite, power and coordinates.
| Date and time | Satellite | FRP (MW) | Lat | Lon |
|---|
Other fires nearby
- 5,338 haEmalahleniSeptember 2019 · 2 days · 10 km away
- 3,910 haThembisile16 July 2026 · 5 days · 10 km away
- 3,038 haThembisileAugust 2016 · 10 days · 15 km away
- 3,947 haThembisileAugust 2021 · 7 days · 16 km away
- 4,171 haThembisileSeptember 2019 · 5 days · 18 km away
- 5,047 haThembisileJuly 2018 · 8 days · 24 km away
Frequently asked questions
- How long did the Thembisile fire last?
- GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 30 July 2023 and 31 July 2023: 2 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 4,671 hectares (46.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
- Which municipalities burned?
- The fire entered 3 municipalities: Thembisile (4,089 ha, 1.7 %); Emalahleni (487 ha, 0.2 %); Steve Tshwete (119 ha, 0.0 %).
- What was the weather like?
- During the fire the temperature reached 17.8 °C, humidity dropped to 10 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 38, class 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 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
No changes since 24 October 2026.
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
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. 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 2025, 100 m cells), summed inside the perimeter: an estimate of what was there, not a damage count.
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.