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Broome fire, September 2017 Broome

Out · last detection 27 Sept 2017, 17:42 UTC

The fire started on 18 September 2017 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 10 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,638 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 645th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2718 with a page). Number 207 in Australia in 2017, of 862.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2026Broome · 2023Broome · 2025Broome · 2022

Burnt area
13,638ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
10days
18 Sept 2017 – 27 Sept 2017
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
18 Sept
2017
Heat detections
457
in a single hotspot: 246 MW
Danger at start
64
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
459MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 18 Sept27 Sept
27 Sept 2017

How it evolved, day by day

18 Sept 2017 · 1,645 MW · 100 19 Sept 2017 · 548 MW · 103 20 Sept 2017 · 213 MW · 39 21 Sept 2017 · 336 MW · 41 22 Sept 2017 · 1,497 MW · 110 23 Sept 2017 · 221 MW · 38 24 Sept 2017 · 68 MW · 12 25 Sept 2017 · 8 MW · 2 26 Sept 2017 · 29 MW · 6 27 Sept 2017 · 24 MW · 6
18 Sept 20 Sept 22 Sept 24 Sept 26 Sept

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

The weather it burned in

37°high
48km/h · peak gust
5%lowest humidity

It had gone more than two months without rain (1 mm or more) when it started.

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 8.6% of the area of London (136 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. Broome where it started
    13,775 ha reached on 18 Sept
    0.2 %

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)
18 Sept 36.4 °C 5 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
19 Sept 36.8 °C 7 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
20 Sept 36.4 °C 6 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
21 Sept 36.0 °C 11 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 59
22 Sept 36.6 °C 16 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
23 Sept 35.4 °C 15 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
24 Sept 34.2 °C 14 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
25 Sept 33.1 °C 26 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
26 Sept 33.7 °C 32 % 38 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 48
27 Sept 33.2 °C 29 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 46
28 Sept after 34.7 °C 30 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 47
29 Sept after 35.3 °C 29 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 53
30 Sept after 34.4 °C 17 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
1 Oct after 34.6 °C 20 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
2 Oct after 37.7 °C 19 % 32 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 52
3 Oct after 38.5 °C 17 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
4 Oct after 36.0 °C 25 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
5 Oct after 36.1 °C 27 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
6 Oct after 36.4 °C 29 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 55
7 Oct after 35.3 °C 30 % 46 km/h 0.3 mm Extreme 54

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 11 Sept 2017
After · 4 Oct 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 · 457Every 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 Broome fire last?
GWIS (Copernicus) dates it between 18 September 2017 and 27 September 2017: 10 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 13,638 hectares (136.4 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (13,775 ha, 0.2 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 36.8 °C, humidity dropped to 5 % and gusts hit 48 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 71, class Very 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

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. 457 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.