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Aurukun fire, August 2019 Cook, Aurukun, Napranum

Out · last detection 16 Sept 2019, 03:30 UTC

The fire started on 28 August 2019 in Aurukun, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,604 hectares from heat detections, spread across 3 municipalities.

It is the 475th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1742 with a page). Number 236 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Cook · 2026Cook · 2026Cook · 2016Cook · 2019

Burnt area
14,604ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
28 Aug 2019 – 16 Sept 2019
Municipalities hit
3
local government areas
Started on
28 Aug
2019
Heat detections
470
in a single hotspot: 121 MW
Danger at start
34
High · FWI index
Average daily power
320MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 28 Aug16 Sept
16 Sept 2019

How it evolved, day by day

28 Aug 2019 · 1 MW · 1 29 Aug 2019 · 4 MW · 1 30 Aug 2019 · 20 MW · 1 31 Aug 2019 · 95 MW · 16 2 Sept 2019 · 100 MW · 16 3 Sept 2019 · 408 MW · 43 4 Sept 2019 · 1,517 MW · 71 5 Sept 2019 · 289 MW · 46 6 Sept 2019 · 770 MW · 30 7 Sept 2019 · 884 MW · 71 8 Sept 2019 · 227 MW · 6 9 Sept 2019 · 809 MW · 22 10 Sept 2019 · 568 MW · 43 11 Sept 2019 · 162 MW · 37 12 Sept 2019 · 40 MW · 21 13 Sept 2019 · 57 MW · 18 14 Sept 2019 · 43 MW · 11 15 Sept 2019 · 71 MW · 13 16 Sept 2019 · 18 MW · 3
28 Aug 31 Aug 4 Sept 7 Sept 10 Sept 13 Sept 16 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

32°high
52km/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

67% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 4,575 ha in 2016, 3,584 ha in 2017, 5,677 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 9,790 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9.2% of the area of London (146 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

  1. Cook
    6,355 ha reached on 3 Sept
    0.1 %
  2. Aurukun where it started
    6,318 ha reached on 28 Aug
    0.8 %
  3. Napranum
    1,980 ha reached on 9 Sept
    1.0 %

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.

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)
28 Aug 30.8 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
29 Aug 30.5 °C 37 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
30 Aug 31.2 °C 35 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
31 Aug 31.4 °C 33 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
1 Sept 31.6 °C 29 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Sept 31.3 °C 28 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
3 Sept 30.6 °C 29 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
4 Sept 30.7 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
5 Sept 30.5 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
6 Sept 31.1 °C 30 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
7 Sept 31.0 °C 30 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
8 Sept 31.5 °C 32 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
9 Sept 31.5 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
10 Sept 31.7 °C 20 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
11 Sept 29.9 °C 28 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
12 Sept 28.6 °C 42 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
13 Sept 30.3 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
14 Sept 30.6 °C 34 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
15 Sept 31.0 °C 32 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
16 Sept 31.6 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
17 Sept after 32.2 °C 29 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Sept after 33.5 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
19 Sept after 33.1 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
20 Sept after 31.1 °C 43 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
21 Sept after 32.4 °C 40 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
22 Sept after 33.2 °C 33 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
23 Sept after 32.6 °C 37 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
24 Sept after 32.7 °C 32 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
25 Sept after 32.9 °C 30 % 52 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
26 Sept after 32.8 °C 34 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 21 Aug 2019
After · 23 Sept 2019

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 · 470Every 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 timeSatelliteFRP (MW)LatLon

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 28 August 2019 to 16 September 2019 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 2 September 2019 to 15 September 2019.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 14,604 hectares (146.0 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 3 municipalities: Cook (6,355 ha, 0.1 %); Aurukun (6,318 ha, 0.8 %); Napranum (1,980 ha, 1.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 31.7 °C, humidity dropped to 20 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 49, class Very high.
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

History of this page · 2 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Last day with fire: 15 September 2019 → 16 September 2019.
  2. Start date: 2 September 2019 → 28 August 2019.

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.

Report an error
What do you think is wrong?

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 2 September 2019 to 15 September 2019. 470 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.

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.