News24 | El Niño warning: R12m allocated as Western Cape braces for hotter, longer fire season

Around R12 million has been allocated to respond to wildfires in the Western Cape this summer.

Chuchart Duangdaw/Getty Images

• Western Cape Premier Alan Winde issued a “call to action” on Thursday, urging the province to prepare for a hotter, drier summer driven by a particularly strong El Niño cycle.
• Around R12 million has been allocated for the 2026/27 fire season as it kicks off earlier than expected, with a wildfire reported in the Cape Winelands on Wednesday.
• Disaster Management head Colin Deiner said 24 firefighting aircraft are on standby to respond to fires within the first hour.

Around R12 million has been allocated to respond to wildfires in the Western Cape this summer, as authorities sound the alarm over the expected early and prolonged fire season.

On Thursday, Premier Alan Winde unpacked the provincial government’s preparedness for the impact of the climate phenomenon, El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO), on the province, as well as preparation for the summer fire season.

“This is a call to action,” said Winde.

“We need to be prepared. Where you live right now matters. If you know that there is a fire risk in the region where you live, now is the time to prepare. In the agricultural sector, now is the time to cut those firebreaks. In our communities, perhaps surrounded by alien vegetation, now is the time to trim, cut, and ensure we’re mitigating that risk. Are you putting water management systems in place so that we use less water?”

Local Government, Environmental Affairs and Development Planning MEC Anton Bredell said the province was likely to experience higher-than-usual temperatures in the upcoming months.

He added: “We know that it’s going to be a hotter summer. We know there’s going to be a prolonged wildfire season. And we know we’re going to struggle with water security.”

“We currently sit with our dam levels at more than 80%, but that’s five percentage points less than the same period last year. It might sound fine, but if we get a hot, dry summer season followed by a dry winter, we could face another drought year,” Bredell cautioned.

The Cape Winelands District Municipality’s Fire Services responded to the first fire of the season on Wednesday, when they contained a large wildland fire in the Kogmanskloof area outside Montagu.

“This is particularly early for a wildfire,” said Cape Winelands Mayor Elna von Schlicht.

“Normally, we start seeing fires in late November, peaking in high summer, from February through to mid-March. The fire experienced yesterday (Wednesday) and early this morning shows us that we can expect a much earlier onset. In turn, this will add pressure on all of our resources – on us as an organisation, on the agricultural sector, and on those it employs. The biggest risk, however, is the risk to our natural spaces and the profound effect fires can have on them.”

Head of the Provincial Disaster Management Centre, Colin Deiner, said that there were several significant fires in Cape Town last October.

He said that the Southern Cape and the Cape Winelands are areas of concern and stressed that additional funding will be available for firefighting efforts if needed.

Deiner said that around 24 firefighting aircraft were available in the province to water-bomb wildfires.

“We work on what’s called the rapid attack system. That means if we receive a report of a fire, we will respond immediately to a high-risk area to try to control it within the first hour of the breakout. We started this programme in 2013, and since then we have [had a] 90% success rate in controlling fires within the first hour,” he said.

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Environmental sustainability chief director Karen Shippey said the province had been seeing significant increases in temperatures, shifts in the seasons, and an acceleration of that temperature change. This has an impact on the province’s agriculture, especially crops such as fruit.

“In general, we’re already picking up more hot days and fewer cold days,” she said.

“We are seeing a reduction in rainfall during autumn, but we’re also seeing an extension of some of those seasons or very unseasonal weather, and a big amount of wind variability.

“[Last year] was extraordinary when it came to wind. We had wind gusts that were five times the average speed in 2025. These are the kinds of things that we need to prepare for as part of our climate change response across the province.”

Shippey said that rainfall patterns are becoming “a lot more complicated”.

She added that the El Niño phenomenon was influenced by ocean temperatures in the mid-Pacific and essentially determines how much water evaporates, where it comes down, and what the temperature is.

Shippey said that this ENSO cycle is predicted to be “particularly strong”.

She said:

We’re looking at warmer-than-normal temperatures and below-average rainfall in some parts of the inland areas. We’ve had a very dry winter, even though we had flooding.

“If it stays around for longer than six to nine months, we’re going to see that dryness staying around [and we’ll have to be] really smart about how we use our water.”

Shippey added that extreme heat could drive water scarcity, fuel a more severe fire season, and pose a health risk.

“Prolonged heat exposure can lead to heat exhaustion, dehydration, and heat stroke, particularly among people who are already stressed in terms of their immune systems or in terms of what their bodies are coping with. Young children, pregnant women, the elderly, all of these groups already have health conditions that could put them in a position where excessive heat will make it worse and potentially even cause death,” she said.