How long did the Banana fire last?

According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2019 to 23 February 2019 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2019 to 23 February 2019.

How much area did it burn?

The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,138 hectares (261.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.

Which municipalities burned?

The fire only entered Banana (26,320 ha, 0.9 %).

What was the weather like?

During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · 2019-02-04 → 2019-02-23

Banana fire, 4 February 2019 Banana

Out · last detection 23 Feb 2019, 15:24 UTC

The fire started on 4 February 2019 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 26,138 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 218th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1744 with a page). Number 119 in Australia in 2019, of 802.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Banana · 2016 Banana · 2018 Banana · 2025 Banana · 2019

Burnt area: 26,138ha; GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration: 20days; 4 Feb 2019 – 23 Feb 2019
Municipalities hit: 1; local government areas
Started on: 4 Feb; 2019
Heat detections: 1,469; in a single hotspot: 159 MW
Danger at start: 34; High · FWI index
Average daily power: 718MW; detected power per day, on average

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 4 Feb23 Feb

Play back 23 Feb 2019

How it evolved, day by day

4 Feb 9 Feb 12 Feb 13 Feb 15 Feb 18 Feb 21 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

40°high

46km/h · peak gust

7%lowest humidity

It had gone 24 days without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

This area had burned before

11% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 166 ha in 2016, 3,030 ha in 2017, 23 ha in 2018. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,778 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

It burned the equivalent of 17% of the area of London (261 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

Banana where it started

26,320 ha reached on 4 Feb

0.9 %

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 area0.19 ha

Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there were about 0.19 hectares of 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)
4 Feb	31.4 °C	32 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
5 Feb	31.6 °C	29 %	44 km/h	0.0 mm	High 37
6 Feb	30.8 °C	39 %	44 km/h	1.1 mm	High 24
7 Feb	29.5 °C	39 %	46 km/h	0.2 mm	High 27
8 Feb	34.3 °C	23 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
9 Feb	36.1 °C	21 %	28 km/h	0.0 mm	High 34
10 Feb	37.5 °C	21 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 40
11 Feb	36.5 °C	25 %	41 km/h	0.6 mm	Very high 38
12 Feb	36.3 °C	27 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
13 Feb	40.5 °C	7 %	41 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 59
14 Feb	37.0 °C	8 %	40 km/h	0.0 mm	Extreme 58
15 Feb	34.2 °C	28 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
16 Feb	33.2 °C	18 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
17 Feb	34.2 °C	18 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
18 Feb	35.3 °C	17 %	34 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
19 Feb	38.1 °C	16 %	33 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 48
20 Feb	39.1 °C	20 %	30 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 49
21 Feb	37.3 °C	14 %	37 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 50
22 Feb	34.4 °C	25 %	45 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
23 Feb	33.2 °C	17 %	38 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
24 Feb after	32.2 °C	21 %	37 km/h	0.2 mm	Very high 48
25 Feb after	31.2 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 46
26 Feb after	31.7 °C	23 %	36 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
27 Feb after	32.2 °C	19 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 47
28 Feb after	30.6 °C	22 %	35 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 45
1 Mar after	30.7 °C	24 %	39 km/h	0.0 mm	Very high 44
2 Mar after	28.3 °C	40 %	40 km/h	0.1 mm	High 34
3 Mar after	29.6 °C	33 %	42 km/h	0.0 mm	High 35
4 Mar after	30.1 °C	32 %	43 km/h	0.0 mm	High 36
5 Mar after	32.0 °C	33 %	34 km/h	0.5 mm	High 34

Before and after, from space

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

↔

Before · 28 Jan 2019

After · 2 Mar 2019

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 · 1,469Every 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 Banana fire last?: According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 4 February 2019 to 23 February 2019 (20 days). The perimeter dates it from 6 February 2019 to 23 February 2019.
How much area did it burn?: The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 26,138 hectares (261.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?: The fire only entered Banana (26,320 ha, 0.9 %).
What was the weather like?: During the fire the temperature reached 40.5 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 46 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 59, 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.

26 October 2026 Start date: 6 February 2019 → 4 February 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.

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What do you think is wrong?

Dates or duration Place or towns Burned area Name It was not a wildfire Same fire as another page Something else

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 6 February 2019 to 23 February 2019. 1,469 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