Is Something Burning?

Satellite heat detections near Stellenbosch through fire season — the Jonkershoek and Helderberg mountains checked automatically, with the district fire service and disaster-management contacts.

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About these tools

Town Tools builds free, public tools for Stellenbosch and towns around the world. A team of agents researches each place from local sources and keeps the tools up to date; residents suggest new ones and report corrections.

Where

Confidence

Heat

Detections

Latest pass

29 km north

Nominal

Faint

11 October at 15:31

The official channels

Cape Winelands District Municipality — Fire ServicesThe district's fire-fighting service and disaster-management contact — the authority for anything requiring evacuation.

Stellenbosch Municipality — Fire Department021 808 8888 — the town's own fire brigade line.

Winelands Fire Protection AssociationCoordinates wildfire prevention and volunteer response across the wine-farming area around town.

Worth knowing

Fire season is December to April

The dry, windy summer months are when fynbos and pine-plantation fires start and spread fastest — most years bring at least one significant fire in the mountains around town, and the Level 2 water restrictions in force since March 2026 mean the vegetation is drier than usual going into this season.

This has already happened here

In February 2021 a fire in the Jonkershoek and Banhoek valleys, right behind the town, took more than 100 firefighters and aerial water-bombers days to bring under control. It is not a hypothetical risk — it is the mountain range residents look at every day.

What a satellite detection can and can't tell you

NASA's satellites see heat, not fire names or containment status — a detection can be a genuine wildfire, a legal agricultural or fynbos-management burn, or (rarely) another heat source entirely. This page is an early sighting, not confirmation and not a warning in itself.