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Banana fire, August 2017 Banana, Central Highlands (Qld)

Out · last detection 1 Sept 2017, 15:50 UTC

The fire started on 15 August 2017 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 17 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 16,717 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 391th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 154 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2025Banana · 2023Banana · 2026Banana · 2025

Burnt area
16,717ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
17days
15 Aug 2017 – 31 Aug 2017
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
15 Aug
2017
Heat detections
1,014
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
36
High · FWI index
Average daily power
306MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Aug31 Aug
1 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

15 Aug 2017 · 194 MW · 39 16 Aug 2017 · 43 MW · 15 17 Aug 2017 · 113 MW · 16 18 Aug 2017 · 612 MW · 105 19 Aug 2017 · 1,154 MW · 213 20 Aug 2017 · 681 MW · 98 21 Aug 2017 · 335 MW · 44 22 Aug 2017 · 132 MW · 42 23 Aug 2017 · 164 MW · 39 24 Aug 2017 · 240 MW · 40 25 Aug 2017 · 136 MW · 36 26 Aug 2017 · 425 MW · 88 27 Aug 2017 · 763 MW · 139 28 Aug 2017 · 341 MW · 48 29 Aug 2017 · 89 MW · 21 30 Aug 2017 · 6 MW · 4 31 Aug 2017 · 12 MW · 2 1 Sept 2017 · 72 MW · 11
15 Aug 18 Aug 19 Aug 21 Aug 24 Aug 27 Aug 30 Aug

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

The weather it burned in

31°high
49km/h · peak gust
9%lowest humidity

It had gone 8 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

6% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 1,036 ha in 2016.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 11% of the area of London (167 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. Banana where it started
    15,067 ha reached on 15 Aug
    0.5 %
  2. Central Highlands (Qld)
    1,805 ha reached on 18 Aug
    0.0 %

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.

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)
15 Aug 28.5 °C 16 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
16 Aug 28.9 °C 24 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
17 Aug 30.6 °C 20 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
18 Aug 25.1 °C 19 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
19 Aug 19.2 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
20 Aug 17.8 °C 10 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
21 Aug 22.0 °C 21 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 38
22 Aug 26.0 °C 30 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 35
23 Aug 26.2 °C 31 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
24 Aug 24.3 °C 26 % 38 km/h 0.1 mm High 36
25 Aug 18.4 °C 14 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
26 Aug 22.2 °C 18 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
27 Aug 24.1 °C 15 % 24 km/h 0.0 mm High 36
28 Aug 21.6 °C 18 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
29 Aug 22.9 °C 13 % 23 km/h 0.0 mm High 37
30 Aug 24.3 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 39
31 Aug 23.8 °C 9 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
1 Sept after 26.4 °C 11 % 21 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 40
2 Sept after 27.6 °C 21 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm High 38
3 Sept after 27.1 °C 26 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
4 Sept after 30.7 °C 13 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
5 Sept after 24.5 °C 12 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
6 Sept after 24.5 °C 12 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 42
7 Sept after 25.1 °C 11 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
8 Sept after 24.6 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 45
9 Sept after 21.7 °C 17 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
10 Sept after 26.0 °C 10 % 29 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 41
11 Sept after 28.6 °C 19 % 28 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 43
12 Sept after 29.3 °C 22 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 44
13 Sept after 29.9 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
14 Sept after 22.8 °C 10 % 57 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Aug 2017
After · 7 Sept 2017

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 · 1,014Every 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 15 August 2017 and 31 August 2017: 17 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 16,717 hectares (167.2 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Banana (15,067 ha, 0.5 %); Central Highlands (Qld) (1,805 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 30.7 °C, humidity dropped to 9 % and gusts hit 49 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 47, 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
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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 from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,014 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.