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Broome fire, 15 October 2018 Broome

Out · last detection 18 Oct 2018, 05:54 UTC

The fire started on 15 October 2018 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 4 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 25,460 hectares from heat detections, spread across a single municipality.

It is the 232th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2728 with a page). Number 97 in Australia in 2018, of 923.

Compare with…

Suggestions: Broome · 2025Broome · 2018Broome · 2018Derby-West Kimberley · 2025

Burnt area
25,460ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
4days
15 Oct 2018 – 18 Oct 2018
Municipalities hit
1
local government areas
Started on
15 Oct
2018
Heat detections
749
in a single hotspot: 217 MW
Danger at start
67
Extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
3.4GW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 15 Oct18 Oct
18 Oct 2018

How it evolved, day by day

15 Oct 2018 · 930 MW · 112 16 Oct 2018 · 3,540 MW · 318 17 Oct 2018 · 8,809 MW · 303 18 Oct 2018 · 144 MW · 16
15 Oct 16 Oct 17 Oct 18 Oct

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
53km/h · peak gust
7%lowest humidity

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

This area had burned before

1% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 368 ha in 2017.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 16% of the area of London (255 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
    25,622 ha reached on 15 Oct
    0.5 %

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)
11 Oct 36.0 °C 23 % 49 km/h 0.2 mm Extreme 67
12 Oct 35.5 °C 33 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 51
13 Oct 37.9 °C 18 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 68
14 Oct 36.4 °C 24 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
15 Oct 37.4 °C 12 % 42 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
16 Oct 38.1 °C 7 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 78
17 Oct 40.4 °C 7 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 75
18 Oct 37.8 °C 16 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
19 Oct after 37.6 °C 23 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 63
20 Oct after 37.4 °C 16 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
21 Oct after 38.9 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
22 Oct after 39.8 °C 14 % 41 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
23 Oct after 39.7 °C 12 % 40 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
24 Oct after 39.7 °C 19 % 53 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
25 Oct after 35.7 °C 28 % 51 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
26 Oct after 35.2 °C 28 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
27 Oct after 36.4 °C 21 % 44 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 57
28 Oct after 37.9 °C 21 % 45 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 8 Oct 2018
After · 25 Oct 2018

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 · 749Every 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 15 October 2018 and 18 October 2018: 4 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 25,460 hectares (254.6 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire only entered Broome (25,622 ha, 0.5 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 40.4 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 53 km/h. The fire danger index (FWI) reached 81, 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. 749 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.