How long did the Aurukun fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 September 2018 to 10 October 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2018 to 7 October 2018.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,248 hectares (112.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Aurukun (11,296 ha, 1.5 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.

Where does this data come from?

From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (geoBoundaries). It is not an official report.

AU · Australia · 2018-09-24 → 2018-10-10

Aurukun fire, 24 September 2018 Aurukun

Out · last detection 10 Oct 2018, 03:24 UTC

The fire started on 24 September 2018 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 11,248 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 660th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 330 in Australia in 2018, of 924.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Aurukun · 2017 Cook · 2026 Cook · 2018 Aurukun · 2023

Burnt area: 11,248ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 17days; 24 Sept 2018 – 10 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 24 Sept; 2018
Heat detections: 326; in a single hotspot: 114 MW
Danger at start: 51; Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power: 180MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 24 Sept10 Oct

Play back 10 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

25 Sept 27 Sept 29 Sept 1 Oct 3 Oct 5 Oct 7 Oct

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

The weather it burned in

37°high

55km/h · peak gust

20%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

63% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,059 ha in 2016, 5,011 ha in 2017. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 7,031 ha that had burned before.

3 ha Aurukun fire, August 2017 8,636 ha in total; the hectares shown are those it shares with this fire

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 7.1% of the area of London (112 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

Aurukun where it started

11,296 ha reached on 25 Sept

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 area< 0.1 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (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)
18 Sept	34.0 °C	26 %	46 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
19 Sept	34.1 °C	25 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
20 Sept	35.3 °C	21 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
21 Sept	34.2 °C	28 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
22 Sept	34.1 °C	28 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
23 Sept	33.6 °C	29 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
24 Sept	33.0 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
25 Sept	33.8 °C	22 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 53
26 Sept	34.0 °C	26 %	49 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
27 Sept	34.7 °C	22 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
28 Sept	33.6 °C	20 %	50 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
29 Sept	33.2 °C	25 %	48 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 51
30 Sept	33.0 °C	27 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 50
1 Oct	34.0 °C	32 %	54 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
2 Oct	34.0 °C	28 %	55 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 52
3 Oct	34.5 °C	29 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
4 Oct	35.7 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
5 Oct	33.0 °C	37 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 41
6 Oct	34.8 °C	32 %	31 km/h	0.2 mm	High 37
7 Oct	35.9 °C	24 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
8 Oct	35.6 °C	28 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
9 Oct	35.9 °C	29 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 42
10 Oct	37.3 °C	23 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 43
11 Oct after	35.3 °C	31 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 38
12 Oct after	36.0 °C	29 %	26 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 39
13 Oct after	36.4 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.1 mm	Very high 42
14 Oct after	34.8 °C	43 %	33 km/h	0.7 mm	High 27
15 Oct after	36.1 °C	35 %	42 km/h	0.1 mm	High 35
16 Oct after	35.9 °C	31 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
17 Oct after	36.8 °C	28 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
18 Oct after	35.8 °C	30 %	27 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
19 Oct after	37.1 °C	28 %	32 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
20 Oct after	35.5 °C	34 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 17 Sept 2018

After · 17 Oct 2018

Before After

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 · 326Every 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 time	Satellite	FRP (MW)	Lat	Lon

Other fires nearby

All fires in Australia ›

Frequently asked questions

How long did the Aurukun fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 24 September 2018 to 10 October 2018 (17 days). The perimeter dates it from 25 September 2018 to 7 October 2018.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 11,248 hectares (112.5 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Aurukun (11,296 ha, 1.5 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 37.3 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 55 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 53, class Extreme.
Where does this data come from?: From the GWIS (Copernicus) burnt perimeter, NASA FIRMS VIIRS hotspots and the administrative boundaries of Australia (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: 000 · Emergency number and official warnings ›

Satellite cross-check

NASA FIRMS ↗
GWIS · Copernicus ↗

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.

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What really happened?

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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 000.

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 25 September 2018 to 7 October 2018. 326 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 ADM2 (Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)). 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.

Where it burned