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Banana fire, January 2019 Banana

Out · last detection 4 Feb 2019, 03:26 UTC

The fire started on 12 January 2019 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 24 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 19,267 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 324th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1737 with a page). Number 170 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2018Banana · 2019Banana · 2026Banana · 2023

Burnt area
19,267ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
24days
12 Jan 2019 – 4 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
12 Jan
2019
Heat detections
1,728
in a single hotspot: 77 MW
Danger at start
29
High · FWI index
Average daily power
520MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 12 Jan4 Feb
4 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

12 Jan 2019 · 24 MW · 10 13 Jan 2019 · 112 MW · 35 14 Jan 2019 · 615 MW · 78 15 Jan 2019 · 556 MW · 90 16 Jan 2019 · 157 MW · 37 17 Jan 2019 · 545 MW · 60 18 Jan 2019 · 223 MW · 54 19 Jan 2019 · 404 MW · 62 20 Jan 2019 · 589 MW · 82 21 Jan 2019 · 996 MW · 119 22 Jan 2019 · 625 MW · 111 23 Jan 2019 · 953 MW · 111 24 Jan 2019 · 810 MW · 124 25 Jan 2019 · 79 MW · 57 26 Jan 2019 · 470 MW · 114 27 Jan 2019 · 685 MW · 112 28 Jan 2019 · 794 MW · 82 29 Jan 2019 · 1,385 MW · 220 30 Jan 2019 · 67 MW · 30 31 Jan 2019 · 978 MW · 97 1 Feb 2019 · 177 MW · 24 4 Feb 2019 · 195 MW · 19
12 Jan 16 Jan 20 Jan 24 Jan 28 Jan 29 Jan 1 Feb

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

The weather it burned in

39°high
52km/h · peak gust
13%lowest humidity

It had gone 13 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 1.0 mm on 11 Feb.

This area had burned before

3% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 564 ha in 2018.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 12% of the area of London (193 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
    19,381 ha reached on 12 Jan
    0.7 %

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)
5 Jan 34.7 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
6 Jan 36.5 °C 13 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
7 Jan 33.2 °C 25 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
8 Jan 24.9 °C 54 % 38 km/h 9.6 mm Very low 2
9 Jan 26.2 °C 77 % 24 km/h 43.9 mm Very low 0
10 Jan 29.1 °C 51 % 30 km/h 7.0 mm Very low 0
11 Jan 31.4 °C 37 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
12 Jan 33.6 °C 22 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
13 Jan 33.5 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
14 Jan 31.9 °C 32 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
15 Jan 33.9 °C 28 % 27 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 14
16 Jan 34.9 °C 33 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
17 Jan 33.5 °C 27 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
18 Jan 32.4 °C 29 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
19 Jan 33.8 °C 27 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
20 Jan 35.1 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
21 Jan 34.1 °C 29 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
22 Jan 33.7 °C 31 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm High 22
23 Jan 34.3 °C 30 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm High 23
24 Jan 35.1 °C 26 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
25 Jan 34.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm High 25
26 Jan 34.2 °C 28 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
27 Jan 34.6 °C 23 % 37 km/h 0.0 mm High 28
28 Jan 35.8 °C 20 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 31
29 Jan 33.0 °C 28 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
30 Jan 31.0 °C 36 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm High 27
31 Jan 32.7 °C 30 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm High 26
1 Feb 32.4 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm High 29
2 Feb 31.5 °C 33 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
3 Feb 31.4 °C 32 % 43 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
4 Feb 32.8 °C 27 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm High 30
5 Feb after 32.4 °C 30 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm High 34
6 Feb after 31.1 °C 39 % 49 km/h 0.3 mm High 29
7 Feb after 30.4 °C 38 % 52 km/h 0.4 mm High 29
8 Feb after 35.4 °C 19 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm High 33
9 Feb after 36.4 °C 19 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm High 32
10 Feb after 38.7 °C 20 % 27 km/h 0.2 mm High 33
11 Feb after 36.8 °C 24 % 39 km/h 1.0 mm High 33

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 5 Jan 2019
After · 11 Feb 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 · 1,728Every 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 January 2019 and 4 February 2019: 24 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 19,267 hectares (192.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Banana (19,381 ha, 0.7 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 38.7 °C, humidity dropped to 13 % and gusts hit 52 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 34, class 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.

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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. 1,728 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.