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Banana fire, November 2023 North Burnett, Banana

Out · last detection 19 Dec 2023, 15:24 UTC

The fire started on 30 November 2023 in Banana, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 20 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 14,210 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 499th largest in Queensland since 2016 (of 1743 with a page). Number 395 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: North Burnett · 2016Banana · 2020North Burnett · 2025Banana · 2025

Burnt area
14,210ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
20days
30 Nov 2023 – 19 Dec 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
30 Nov
2023
Heat detections
1,262
in a single hotspot: 237 MW
Danger at start
8
Low · FWI index
Average daily power
665MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 30 Nov19 Dec
19 Dec 2023

How it evolved, day by day

30 Nov 2023 · 772 MW · 22 1 Dec 2023 · 676 MW · 32 2 Dec 2023 · 6 MW · 1 3 Dec 2023 · 70 MW · 7 4 Dec 2023 · 2,503 MW · 107 5 Dec 2023 · 187 MW · 24 6 Dec 2023 · 1,190 MW · 119 7 Dec 2023 · 2,342 MW · 237 8 Dec 2023 · 878 MW · 178 9 Dec 2023 · 734 MW · 119 10 Dec 2023 · 648 MW · 109 11 Dec 2023 · 16 MW · 5 12 Dec 2023 · 79 MW · 23 13 Dec 2023 · 170 MW · 37 14 Dec 2023 · 1,569 MW · 102 15 Dec 2023 · 224 MW · 15 16 Dec 2023 · 442 MW · 34 17 Dec 2023 · 479 MW · 47 18 Dec 2023 · 156 MW · 12 19 Dec 2023 · 157 MW · 32
30 Nov 3 Dec 4 Dec 6 Dec 9 Dec 12 Dec 15 Dec 18 Dec

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

The weather it burned in

35°high
56km/h · peak gust
24%lowest humidity

It had gone one day without rain (1 mm or more) when it started. Rain came after the fire: 7.1 mm on 21 Dec.

This area had burned before

20% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 271 ha in 2016, 760 ha in 2018, 1,313 ha in 2019, 356 ha in 2020, 240 ha in 2021.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 9% of the area of London (142 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. North Burnett
    10,423 ha reached on 1 Dec
    0.5 %
  2. Banana where it started
    3,863 ha reached on 30 Nov
    0.1 %

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 2025
Built-up area< 0.1 ha
Residents< 20

Inside the perimeter there was no noticeable built-up land and almost nobody lived there (GHSL 2025, 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. The GHSL 2025 epoch is a projection made from 2020 and earlier data.

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)
30 Nov 32.8 °C 24 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Low 8
1 Dec 30.8 °C 42 % 56 km/h 2.7 mm Very low 3
2 Dec 30.3 °C 60 % 51 km/h 20.2 mm Very low 0
3 Dec 33.8 °C 28 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Very low 4
4 Dec 35.1 °C 24 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 12
5 Dec 32.6 °C 33 % 29 km/h 0.3 mm Moderate 12
6 Dec 34.0 °C 28 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 13
7 Dec 34.1 °C 27 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 15
8 Dec 33.7 °C 27 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
9 Dec 32.7 °C 31 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 17
10 Dec 31.6 °C 29 % 54 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 21
11 Dec 30.6 °C 35 % 50 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 19
12 Dec 31.7 °C 35 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 19
13 Dec 31.9 °C 34 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 18
14 Dec 33.2 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
15 Dec 34.2 °C 37 % 29 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 16
16 Dec 34.3 °C 40 % 37 km/h 1.7 mm Low 9
17 Dec 33.8 °C 42 % 34 km/h 6.6 mm Very low 2
18 Dec 34.3 °C 36 % 34 km/h 0.1 mm Moderate 12
19 Dec 33.3 °C 30 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Moderate 16
20 Dec after 32.3 °C 33 % 30 km/h 0.2 mm Moderate 15
21 Dec after 29.0 °C 46 % 29 km/h 7.1 mm Very low 1

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 23 Nov 2023
After · 26 Dec 2023

If the day is cloudy, change the date: each satellite passes once a day. In false colour the burnt ground looks brown or red.

The smoke

CAMS · Copernicus

On 12 December 2023 the air beside the fire reached 57 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 20: 1.3 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak57 µg/m³
Days over the guideline3 days
PM1084 µg/m³
Optical depth1.01
28293012345678910111213141516171819202122
Good Fair Moderate Poor Very poor Extremely poor

Particles from the Copernicus CAMS model at the centre of the perimeter; these are not measurements in each town. The pale bar is the worst hour, the solid one the daily average.

Open-Meteo.com (CC BY 4.0) · Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (CAMS)

Detections table · 1,262Every 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 30 November 2023 and 19 December 2023: 20 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 14,210 hectares (142.1 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: North Burnett (10,423 ha, 0.5 %); Banana (3,863 ha, 0.1 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 35.1 °C, humidity dropped to 24 % and gusts hit 56 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 21, class Moderate.
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; 2 polygons grouped in this page.
  • Dates from the perimeter: the VIIRS detections inside it did not change them. 1,262 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 2025, 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.