Skip to content
worldfires
en
AU · Australia · →

Banana fire, 12 November 2016 Central Highlands (Qld), Banana

Out · last detection 26 Nov 2016, 14:41 UTC

The fire started on 12 November 2016 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 15 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 21,415 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 293th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 57 in Australia in 2016, of 427.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2019Banana · 2019Banana · 2025

Burnt area
21,415ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
15days
12 Nov 2016 – 26 Nov 2016
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
12 Nov
2016
Heat detections
1,463
in a single hotspot: 215 MW
Danger at start
10
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
954MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Nov26 Nov
26 Nov 2016

How it evolved, day by day

12 Nov 2016 · 132 MW · 7 13 Nov 2016 · 32 MW · 11 14 Nov 2016 · 299 MW · 52 15 Nov 2016 · 360 MW · 84 16 Nov 2016 · 566 MW · 117 17 Nov 2016 · 156 MW · 39 18 Nov 2016 · 887 MW · 88 19 Nov 2016 · 714 MW · 108 20 Nov 2016 · 3,078 MW · 245 21 Nov 2016 · 3,473 MW · 256 22 Nov 2016 · 990 MW · 171 23 Nov 2016 · 2,793 MW · 194 24 Nov 2016 · 667 MW · 49 25 Nov 2016 · 159 MW · 37 26 Nov 2016 · 7 MW · 5
12 Nov 15 Nov 18 Nov 21 Nov 24 Nov

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

The weather it burned in

40°high
44km/h · peak gust
12%lowest humidity

It had gone 10 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 3.7 mm on 9 Dec.

This area had burned before

No earlier perimeters overlap this fire since 2016, when the satellite record begins.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 14% of the area of London (214 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. Central Highlands (Qld)
    11,227 ha reached on 15 Nov
    0.2 %
  2. Banana where it started
    10,378 ha reached on 12 Nov
    0.4 %

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 2015
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2015, 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)
12 Nov 34.4 °C 40 % 44 km/h 3.7 mm Low 10
13 Nov 33.7 °C 28 % 40 km/h 9.8 mm Low 7
14 Nov 28.9 °C 14 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
15 Nov 26.7 °C 21 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
16 Nov 30.4 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
17 Nov 29.8 °C 22 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
18 Nov 30.1 °C 19 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
19 Nov 30.7 °C 23 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
20 Nov 32.2 °C 18 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
21 Nov 30.7 °C 19 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
22 Nov 31.1 °C 20 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
23 Nov 34.6 °C 14 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Nov 35.5 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
25 Nov 33.1 °C 15 % 33 km/h 0.1 mm Very high 38
26 Nov 29.7 °C 20 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Nov after 31.5 °C 23 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
28 Nov after 32.3 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
29 Nov after 33.3 °C 15 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
30 Nov after 34.4 °C 18 % 30 km/h 2.0 mm High 25
1 Dec after 36.3 °C 19 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
2 Dec after 39.5 °C 12 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
3 Dec after 40.5 °C 16 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
4 Dec after 38.4 °C 21 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Dec after 38.0 °C 23 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
6 Dec after 37.4 °C 25 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
7 Dec after 36.2 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
8 Dec after 36.3 °C 24 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
9 Dec after 27.0 °C 52 % 38 km/h 3.7 mm Very low 5

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Nov 2016
After · 3 Dec 2016

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 · 1,463Every 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 Banana fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 12 November 2016 and 26 November 2016: 15 days between the first and last heat detection of the perimeter.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 21,415 hectares (214.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Central Highlands (Qld) (11,227 ha, 0.2 %); Banana (10,378 ha, 0.4 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 12 % and gusts hit 44 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 46, 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 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.

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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,463 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 2015, 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.