Started on Jul 1, 2026.
United States todayLive
True view
Fire view
Fire view (right): infrared (SWIR), sees through smoke and brings out the heat.
🟢 green = vegetation
🟤 brown = already burned
🟠 orange = fire right now
Drag to compare: normal photo on the left, heat brought out on the right.
Green: vegetationBrown: already burnedOrange: fire right nowSentinel-2 · Copernicus
Red dots: heat detected by satellite in the last 48h. NASA FIRMS
Quick facts
- Location
- 9 miles northeast of Walterboro, SC
- Cause
- Natural
- People working on it
- 18 people
- Complexity
- Type 5 IncidentOfficial scale from 5 to 1: a Type 1 is the most complex in the country.
- What's burning
- Timber (Litter and Understory)
- How it's behaving
- Active
- Jurisdiction
- Private land
Glossary: what each term means
Barely moving. Low, thin smoke.
Burning without flame, in the ground or in roots. Can flare up days later.
Moves slowly, hugging the ground.
Spreads with low, steady flames.
Spreading evenly and steadily, with visible flame.
Fast and unpredictable.
Runs along the ground much faster than a person walks.
Grows along the sides, not head-on.
Moves against the wind or downhill, which makes it slower.
Climbs into the treetops and jumps crown to crown. It can't be attacked from the ground.
Climbs into the crowns in bursts and drops back down.
Whole trees flaring up like torches.
Single scattered trees flaring up whole, like torches.
Whole clumps of trees flaring at once.
Wind carries embers through the air and starts new fires ahead of the front: that is how a fire jumps a road or a firebreak.
The wind pushes it in long runs in one direction.
The ones marked ● are the behaviors that make a fire harder to stop. They are not a warning or an instruction: they are the description written by the agency in charge. For decisions, always follow your emergency services.
Burning across Colleton County in South Carolina, the Can City Fire has consumed 412 acres of private timber land since its natural ignition on July 1, 2026. Located nine miles northeast of Walterboro, the Type 5 incident has burned for 44 days with an average daily growth of approximately nine acres per day. Despite an active fire behavior profile in the local litter and understory fuels, the wildfire has reached 100 percent containment under the direction of a Type 5 Incident Commander overseeing 18 personnel.
The containment of the South Carolina blaze unfolds amid a broader national fire landscape in 2026. Across the country, 2,902,022 hectares have burned so far this year, tracking 47 percent below the two-decade average. This regional activity aligns with the area's typical fire season, which traditionally spans from June to October. Operations on the incident accumulated a total cost of $5,000 as crews successfully halted the spread of the timber fire.
In context
This wildfire burned in South Carolina for 48 days. In total it burned about 412 acres — around 1.7 km².
In the Northern Hemisphere, wildfire activity usually peaks during the warm, dry months — roughly May through October.
The bigger picture in United States
Across United States, roughly 3,415,301 hectares have burned so far in 2026 — 38% below the two-decade average. Data from Copernicus GWIS.
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Community reports
Reports from people near the fire · unverified
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Not official emergency information. In an emergency, contact fire services/authorities.
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