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Broome fire, 21 October 2023 Broome, East Pilbara

Out · last detection 29 Oct 2023, 05:10 UTC

The fire started on 21 October 2023 in Broome, Australia, and satellites saw it burning for 8 days. Copernicus’s global GWIS system rebuilt a burnt perimeter of 13,070 hectares from heat detections, spread across 2 municipalities.

It is the 702th largest in Western Australia since 2016 (of 2732 with a page). Number 421 in Australia in 2023, of 1235.

Compare with…

Suggestions: East Pilbara · 2018East Pilbara · 2023East Pilbara · 2023East Pilbara · 2026

Burnt area
13,070ha
GWIS perimeter (Copernicus)
Duration
8days
21 Oct 2023 – 28 Oct 2023
Municipalities hit
2
local government areas
Started on
21 Oct
2023
Heat detections
608
in a single hotspot: 120 MW
Danger at start
81
Very extreme · FWI index
Average daily power
910MW
detected power per day, on average

Where it burned

HOTSPOTS BY DAY 21 Oct28 Oct
29 Oct 2023

How it evolved, day by day

21 Oct 2023 · 1,411 MW · 57 22 Oct 2023 · 292 MW · 45 23 Oct 2023 · 316 MW · 24 24 Oct 2023 · 213 MW · 28 25 Oct 2023 · 502 MW · 51 26 Oct 2023 · 4,865 MW · 340 27 Oct 2023 · 426 MW · 45 28 Oct 2023 · 89 MW · 16 29 Oct 2023 · 75 MW · 2
21 Oct 23 Oct 25 Oct 26 Oct 27 Oct 29 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

42°high
50km/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

22% of the perimeter overlaps earlier fires recorded since 2016: 2,090 ha in 2018, 52 ha in 2020, 562 ha in 2021, 319 ha in 2022. Part of it burned more than once, so the yearly figures add up to more than the 2,847 ha that had burned before.

How big is it?

10 km
It burned the equivalent of 8.3% of the area of London (131 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
    12,288 ha reached on 21 Oct
    0.2 %
  2. East Pilbara
    954 ha reached on 22 Oct
    0.0 %

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)
21 Oct 42.0 °C 7 % 48 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 81
22 Oct 39.7 °C 13 % 36 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
23 Oct 39.8 °C 17 % 35 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 66
24 Oct 39.7 °C 15 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 62
25 Oct 40.9 °C 13 % 39 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 67
26 Oct 40.7 °C 13 % 49 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 74
27 Oct 39.6 °C 12 % 50 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 79
28 Oct 39.9 °C 12 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Very extreme 71
29 Oct after 39.9 °C 11 % 33 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 61
30 Oct after 39.1 °C 22 % 46 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 69
31 Oct after 38.5 °C 24 % 47 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 64
1 Nov after 39.2 °C 21 % 36 km/h 0.1 mm Extreme 55
2 Nov after 40.2 °C 18 % 25 km/h 0.0 mm Very high 49
3 Nov after 40.8 °C 15 % 30 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 50
4 Nov after 40.2 °C 16 % 31 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 58
5 Nov after 40.3 °C 19 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
6 Nov after 41.4 °C 17 % 34 km/h 0.0 mm Extreme 56
7 Nov after 39.4 °C 23 % 29 km/h 0.5 mm Extreme 52

Before and after, from space

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

Before · 14 Oct 2023
After · 4 Nov 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 27 October 2023 the air beside the fire reached 180 µg/m³ of PM2.5. That day averaged 92: 6.2 times the WHO daily guideline (15).

PM2.5 peak180 µg/m³
Days over the guideline9 days
PM10258 µg/m³
Optical depth2.73
202122232425262728293031
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 · 608Every 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?
According to the heat detections seen by satellite inside the perimeter, it burned from 21 October 2023 to 28 October 2023 (8 days). The perimeter dates it from 22 October 2023 to 28 October 2023.
How much area did it burn?
The perimeter GWIS (Copernicus) rebuilt from heat detections is 13,070 hectares (130.7 km²). It is an estimate: official national figures may differ.
Which municipalities burned?
The fire entered 2 municipalities: Broome (12,288 ha, 0.2 %); East Pilbara (954 ha, 0.0 %).
What was the weather like?
During the fire the temperature reached 42.0 °C, humidity dropped to 7 % and gusts hit 50 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 · 1 Changes in area, dates, name, official record or merged pages, compared every night since 24 October 2026.
  1. Start date: 22 October 2023 → 21 October 2023.

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 adjusted with the VIIRS detections inside the perimeter, which said 22 October 2023 to 28 October 2023. 608 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.